The Inquest

Stephen Dando-Collins has written a great historical portrait, as if he experienced himself what he describes. The main and secondary characters are all greatly conceived and developed, as well as the plot and the scenarios. In the end, the conclusion of the book is not as bright. But the fact is that the "historical Jesus" is quite controversial, so the author tried to leave the conclusion open. He built a rational and page-turner plot to the end, then an ambiguous event happens. It is much, much better than the Da Vinci Code. And, in the end, the enigma called "Jesus Christ" remains as untouchable as before. In "The Inquest", Jesus was revealed as a special man (maybe unique) with an unresistable message, but surrounded since the beginning by all too human disciples. His last days, as narrated by Dando-Collins, reflect the ambiguities of all Christian churches and of our human condition.

This is a good book, I have read two of his Legion book series, and this was just has easy to read and just has informaative. This book can be unsettling to some people who don't like to have the life and death of Jesus questioned, but if one is interested in the time period and want to get a POV of what it might have been like during that period and to have an understanding of what Roman military life might have been like and then this is a good book to read. There will be some who will get bent out of shape because this book isn't 100% in unison with the bible, but he doesn't go as far as the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons by Brown. But Dando-Collins does raise questions as if a Roman might, with their mindset and view of life and how foriegn the Nazarene's beleifs are in comparison to the Roman Religious life. So the Roman POV is very sceptical to the One God view of the Christians, whereas the Romans have a multiple beleif in different Gods, I appreciated this, because it created a tension in the book. Characters are written very well, some are two sided, but the main characters are 3-D, the background and the history is the main character of the book, because it is peeled away through out the book, the one thing that is in flux. This is a recommend book for those that like Historical Fiction of an inquestive nature. Another good book is The Tribune: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Patrick Larkin.