The Apocalypse Door

by James Macdonald
Tor Books
$22.95

Here's a slick and stylish hard-boiled thriller from one half of the team of Macdonald and Doyle who normally produces space opera. The Apocalypse Door blends a cup of espionage with a hefty dash of horror and fantasy resulting in a lightweight but still satisfying thriller that would make a great movie (despite its complex backstory, which even includes a parallel and intersecting narrative from the past).

Reminiscent of both Tim Powers' superb novel Declare (see my review on this site) and one of the seventies' best off-beat series, The Inquisitor by Simon Quinn (actually Gorky Park's Martin Cruz Smith hiding behind a suitably pseudo-religious monicker), The Apocalypse Door is a lot more humorous than either and makes an excellent series "pilot."

The novel posits that France's King Philip did not manage to destroy the Knights Templar in 1312 (which he attempted for his own nefarious reasons). Indeed, many Knights were tortured and executed after "confessing" their sins of heresy to the Inquisition, and the order's vast wealth was sacked by the money-grubbing monarch. But here it turns out the order survived secretly and even now acts as a sort of religious CIA-OSS-KGB. Other military orders such as the Teutonic Knights also survived, as did some pretty wild orders of cloistered nuns—and all these groups now vie with each other and with world intelligence agencies in the pursuit of justice. Of course, justice is relative. A neat twist on the Templar history is that the 33 members of the Inner Temple are priests as well as trained operatives, which presents some rather interesting moral dilemmas. (In reality, Templars were known as warrior monks, taking vows of poverty and celibacy, but were often of noble birth and not ordained clerics. They did, however, call each other "brother" and live in monastery-like fortresses.)

Peter Crossman—a sort of holy Bond, James Bond—is supposed to train Simon, a new brother priest-operative on what should be a low-key mission to track down some UN peacekeepers missing from Jerusalem. Cracking a New Jersey warehouse, they find a crate of strange spores which shun not light, but the holy cross. Thrust into a sudden game of cat and mouse with various competing agencies, Crossman and his acolyte must navigate between the deadly groups and figure out whether they are dealing with the supernatural, a Russian matter-transmitter, or both—and survive long enough to neutralize it before the end of the universe. Along for the ride is Maggie, an achingly beautiful assassin—and also a nun (why? "Because nuns are so good at it.") known as Sister Mary Magdalene. Soon they're knee-deep in death and double-dealing involving an art dealer/Satanist while hunting for the infamous Baphomet, the brass head reputedly worshiped by Templars (which led to their persecution) which is perhaps now opening a portal to Hell itself. Meantime, they must fight off hordes of zombie-like enemies intent on stopping them.

Sound like fun? It is. Written in a breezy, Hammett-style noir First Person tone and full of loaded asides, it's hard to find fault with this bubbling cauldron at all. Here's a small one: though the press kit for this novel claims this is an alternate Earth, it's not very obvious. If one looks hard, one might also complain that Crossman having to grant his intended assassin absolution contradicts the frequent "this is a dirty game" statements (all of which are proven by the agents' slip-sliding allegiances). In The Inquisitor series, Quinn/Smith handled this apparent paradox by requiring Francis Xavier Killy to do penance for each "sanction" (hit) or killing (as well as sex), but after the fact. Perhaps Macdonald plans to elaborate eventually—and let Crossman finally sleep with Sister Maggie. A more convincing detail is that Macdonald's Knights are required to give Last Rites even to enemy agents.

All in all, the slickness, rapid-fire pacing, and the sheer exuberant fun of it all make up for quibbles and whisk the reader through to the satisfying finale.