The King James Conspiracy »

PHILIP DEPOY is the award-winning author of many novels and plays. He is the director of the theatre program at Clayton State University. He lives in Decatur, Alabama.

The turning of the wheel by the tilling of the wheat.

With these cryptic words, a conspiracy is set into motion that threatens the new translation of the Bible ordered by King James I, and the lives of the scholars working on it.

In 1605, in Cambridge England, a group of scholars brought together to create a definitive English translation of the Bible finds one of its members savagely murdered by unknown hands. Deacon Marbury, the man in charge of this group, seeks outside help to find the murderer, to protect the innocents and their work. But the people who offer to help are not who they claim to be and the man they send to Marbury—Brother Timon—has a secret past, much blood on his hands, and is an agent for those forces that wish to halt the translation itself.

But as the hidden killer continues his gruesome work, the body count among the scholars continues to rise. Brother Timon is torn between his loyalties and believes an even greater crisis looms as ancient and alarming secrets are revealed—secrets dating back to the earliest days of Christianity that threaten the most basic of its closely held beliefs.

Publishers Weekly

In 1605, one gory slaying after another disrupts the team of Cambridge scholars James I has assembled to prepare a new English translation of the Bible in this feverish historical thriller from DePoy (Dead Easy). Deacon Francis Marbury, the project's local supervisor, thinks he's been sent a trustworthy aide to help solve the murders, but the enigmatic Brother Timon is actually an agent of Pope Clement bent on sabotage. The Catholic church fears the group's study of ancient texts may be uncovering dire secrets that question the basis of all branches of organized Christianity. Much more blood is spilled before Timon can decide where his soul's allegiance really belongs. Clearly, both the king and the pope are insane, but personal obsessions dog many other characters, who spend excessive time skulking through chilly corridors and slashing at dark shadows. Fans of theological melodrama should enjoy this, but others may tire of the bloody hugger-mugger. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.