Absolute Proof, Peter James

ABSOLUTE PROOF is a rare thing in these parts - a "did not finish". Try as I might to get into this whopping big thriller, it's just too much of a slog. (For the record I'm not a fan of Dan Brown's books either so there is a distinct possibility that this one was never destined to work for me as it seems to have been compared favourably to them in a number of quarters).

But for this reader, right from the outset there was much that pushed suspension of disbelief too far, and much that just flat out didn't work. The reader is called up on accept that an investigative journalist who has experienced war zone death and terror returns to his daily life willing to accept his wife's infidelity, willing to live with his concerns about his unborn child's parentage, willing to continue to not really trust this woman, until it suddenly becomes something that isn't much talked about again. Mind you, this is same man who is also willing to accept the word of a total stranger that he has proof of the existence of a god. He's willing to pursue that investigation after the violent death of that self-same stranger, he's willing to believe DNA can be retrieved from coagulated blood found in a chalice recovered from the bottom of a well after a couple of thousand years, that the compass points dictated by this god to the aforementioned stranger are pointing to all these artifacts that line up nicely to provide a DNA profile that matches... and and and.

Maybe all of that will work for some readers, perhaps it is better if the central premise actually made a modicum of sense - but it's slower than continental drift on Mars in progressing, there is SO MUCH that's just accepted on face value, and it all descended into farcical fantasy with absolutely no semblance of logic that I fear the premise has no hope of making sense, the resolution is so uninteresting (and many aspects so utterly predictable) that I have had to abandon half-way through before excessive irritation gets the better of me.