The Debt

In Cooper’s unremarkable third Cal Donovan thriller (after 2018’s Three Marys), an unexpected discovery rocks the foundations of the Catholic Church. Cal, a Harvard professor whose previous service to Pope Celestine was rewarded with an all-access pass to the Vatican archives, finds a reference, while researching the revolutions of the Italian states in 1848, to a 19th-century loan to the church made by the Jewish Sassoon banking firm. The Sassoons lent the sum under duress after a family member was held hostage; the loan was never repaid. Including compound interest, the church’s debt now amounts to about $27 billion. The pope, who takes the crisis as an opportunity to get a handle on the church’s wealth, proposes to sell enough assets to pay off the debt—and found a charitable foundation in partnership with the Sassoons. The plan, of course, triggers violent opposition, placing both Cal’s life and the pope’s at risk. Cooper fails to make the plot conceit believable, and neither the characters nor the prose rise above routine. Cooper’s attempt to spin a religious tale without great theological implications falls flat. (May)