The Book of Judges
A Novel
An intriguing thriller that follows consequential judges through the centuries, The Book of Judges rests on exciting conspiracies.
A mysterious, world-shattering secret relating to historical judges across millennia initiates a cat-and-mouse chase in Gary Fields’s thriller The Book of Judges.
A young lawyer, Josh, arrives at the home of his former law teacher, Judge Maloch. The judge is working on a book about historical judges and their distinct human rights cases. He hints that he is on the cusp of a major revelation, and his laptop contains the information.
When a hulking assassin arrives and murders the judge in front of Josh, a scuffle ensues. Josh rushes out with the judge’s laptop. He ropes Sammi, one of the judge’s graduate students, and his friend and technology wizard, Mark, into his investigation to find out what the judge was protecting. What they find strains credulity: A major, life-altering event will take place in three days if they cannot prevent the assassination of another judge, the last in a long line whose decisions will either harm or help the world. Clues exist within the Bible’s book of Judges.
The book introduces a triangle of competing players, all vying for the information and human sources inside of the judge’s laptop. At the risk of their lives, Josh, Sammi, and Mark keep one step ahead of the assassin, Billy Ray, whose continual near misses become almost comical. Also at play is China’s interest in an obscure spiritual group, the Falun Dafa, whose practitioners use body and mind exercises to achieve a higher state of consciousness, as it threatens the Communist Party’s iron grip on peoples’ thoughts.
Meanwhile, Josh and Sammi share their haunting dreams of other lives from across the centuries, where judges from ancient to medieval times worked. These historical flashbacks are vibrant, their focus ranging from imperial Rome to China under Mongol rule, Byzantium, and King Henry VIII’s realm; each era is well described, and the book is attentive to the vernacular of each period as well as to showing how lawmaking evolved over time.
The verbal to-and-fro between Josh and Sammi to hash out the ultimate meanings of their memories is intriguing. As they get closer to puzzling out the identity of the final judge, the narrative hits full throttle, moving toward a cinematic ending. However, while its elements of history, religion, and analysis are keen, the book’s inclusion of an arcane conspiracy theory is underdeveloped, even after the denouement. The book ends too soon, and the fallout is not explored, impeding final satisfaction.
The Book of Judges is an original, time-hopping thriller in which the secrets of the past lead to transcendent reckonings.
Reviewed by
Peggy Kurkowski
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
