cover image Foretold by Thunder

Foretold by Thunder

E.M. Davey. Overlook, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-4683-1296-6

Early in BBC journalist Davey’s first novel, a Da Vinci Code knockoff, historian Roger Britton, a professor at King’s College London, phones journalist Jake Wolsey after reading a brief newspaper article written by Jake reporting that Winston Churchill met in 1941 with the head of MI6 to discuss “the ancient Etruscan matter.” Britton claims to know why Churchill was interested in the ancient Etruscans; Jake politely listens, dismisses the man as a “nutter,” and ends the call. After a bolt of lightning strikes Britton dead on the Embankment, Jake decides to learn more about the academic’s work. His conversations with Britton’s stunningly attractive graduate assistant, Florence Chung, give him enough information to persuade his boss to allow him to travel with her to Turkey in search of missing sacred Etruscan texts. Unbeknownst to Jake and Florence, an MI6 operative is keeping tabs on them. Readers should be prepared for an over-the-top climax and some banal prose (“As Jenny sat on the Heathrow Express that evening she had things on her mind”). Agent: Robin Wade, Wade & Co. (U.K.). (Aug.)