From the predictions of Tertullian in the second century AD to the moral crisis of the present day. “The snakes of the Vatican”, published by Newton Compton, is a gripping thriller that spares no twists. The latest novel by Carmelo Nicolosi De Luca, a long-time Sicilian journalist, mixes ancient history and literary imagination, held together by a pressing and refined rhythm.
The events of the thriller unfold between a current and pressing present and a distant past, cloaked in the mists of divine prophecies of the Christian apologist Tertullian about the dangers that loom over the Church of Rome. Prophecies that two elderly priests of Palermo and Rome, scholars of Roman history, have discovered in some ancient documents. A precise exegesis that leads them to connect some events that occurred in the second and third centuries after Christ, during the first persecutions of Christians, with episodes of our days.
So far everything seems to run along the lines of the historical and futuristic novel. The sudden spark of the thriller lights up when the two priests, after a shooting in front of a church, disappear. Who has an interest in shutting their mouths? What nerve did they discover? The irreverent head of the Palermo Flying Squad, Giovanni Barraco, and his old friend Midiri Commissioner of Rome, flanked by Monsignor Cattaneo, a perceptive and “well-connected” man of the Holy See, deal with the investigations. Characters that the loyal readers of Nicolosi’s previous novels have come to know and love. In the story of the two missing priests, a mysterious French killer will also appear, “the hawk”, who unexpectedly takes their side, while the Italian and French intelligence services work alongside, weaving the threads of the story up to London, Zurich, Beirut, Sidon.
The story gives no respite and keeps the reader in suspense until the last page, thanks also to the wide and refined narrative language. After all, as Nicolosi himself states, “at the base of the novel is the search for many truths. From the problems that affect the Church today, to the crisis that the planet is experiencing ”. And, as we know, telling the multiple and contradictory truths of the world needs to gather a broad and versatile narrative style, which knows how to hide but also reveal, remove but also throw a beam of light on the shadows of humanity.
Carmelo Nicolosi De Luca, a past at Corriere di Sicilia and Corriere della sera, writes for the “Giornale di Sicilia” and “I serpenti del Vaticano” (318 pages, cover price 9.90 euros) is his third work, after “The conspiracy of the cursed monks” and “The code of the knights of Christ”, these too published by Newton Compton.