Meltzer writes suspense novels and has also worked on comic books. He's responsible for the 2004 miniseries Identity Crisis, which used up not one, but two super-hero wives for no good reason. Sue Dibny, wife of Elongated Man Ralph Dibny, is murdered (and given a previously unknown history as a rape victim), and her killer is Jean Loring, the whacked-out ex-wife of The Atom. In a logic-defying twist, Loring is sent, knowledge of secret identities and all, to Arkham Asylum -- home of not a few folks who would just loooove a little sit-down chat with her about that sort of thing.
Yes, well, that paragraph certainly shows I know too much about comics, but my point is that Meltzer isn't long on logic or common sense when he tells a story. Book of Lies is not really any different. Cal Harper, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, now works for an agency that helps homeless people in Florida. He and his friend Roosevelt, a former minister, spend nights in a van, picking up homeless people and taking them to a shelter. Roosevelt, you see, was a Methodist minister in Tennessee until he started pushing 40, at which time the leaders in his church became uneasy about his unmarried state. Some church members began to label him as gay, and his denomination apparently put him on some sort of blacklist so he couldn't serve a church. Rather than knuckle under and get married, Roosevelt left to help the homeless in Florida.
Well, this 44-year-old single Methodist minister couldn't stop laughing for about a hundred pages at that scenario, so some of the next part is a little fuzzy. Cal and Roosevelt happen upon a homeless man who has been shot, who turns out to be Cal's estranged father. Although he has been out of prison for several years after finishing a sentence for manslaughter in Cal's mother's death, the two haven't seen or spoken to each other.
Things about the shooting are mysterious, and they grow more mysterious as Cal tries to find out what his father is doing. Another layer of intrigue builds when Cal uses his connections with a tribal police department to run ballistics and learn that the gun which wounded his father also killed Mitchell Siegel, the father of Superman creator Jerry Siegel. And still another appears with the presence of Ellis, a shadowy agent/assassin who works for the even shadowy-er Thule Society for their own dark ends.
Along the way we add in Serena, the mysterious woman who's presence seems necessary to Cal's father, and Naomi Molina, an ICE agent who wants to talk to Cal about her partner Timothy's late-night rendezvous with Cal. The actual "Book of Lies" is supposedly the weapon Cain used to kill Abel, and Cal, his father and Serena must track down the connection between Mitchell Siegel and this ancient artifact. And Roosevelt will use his theological expertise to guide their search so they can stay ahead of Ellis and Naomi Molina.
In essence, this is The DaVinci Code with Jerry Siegel subbing in for Leonardo and Siegel hometown Cleveland, Ohio subbing in for all the places in Europe Robert Langdon gets chased through. In his acknowledgment page, Meltzer says he's trying to tell a bigger story, about fathers and sons and stuff, than just a thriller. After I stopped laughing about Meltzer's dearth of Methodist polity knowledge, I spent most of the rest of the book rolling my eyes, so I may have missed where he did either one. Certain figures pop onto the scene in order to deliver rambling expository speeches and then disappear. Even Serena, who is supposedly some kind of main character, does little more than spout some kind of granola astrology. Molina's pursuit is supposed to offer some kind of pressure on our heroes, but her presence offers little tension and less purpose.
The Miami Herald's book review provides this cover quote: "Marvelously plotted...intricately woven...heart-pounding." I have no idea what book the reviewer read, but its author needs to get in touch with Grand Central Publishing so he or she can get their blurb back.
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