The Genesis Secret by Tom Knox

Val Penny ♦ April 24, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

Tom Knox is the pseudonym of British writer and journalist Sean Thomas. Born in Devon, England in 1963, he studied Philosophy at University College London.  I had never read any of his books but found this one for sale in my library and picked it up to read on holiday.  I am glad I did.  

The Genesis Secret is Knox’s first novel and is set in the sun burnt deserts of eastern Turkey, archaeologists are unearthing a stone temple, the world’s most ancient building. When Journalist Rob Luttrell is sent to report on the dig, he is intrigued to learn that someone deliberately buried the site 10,000 years ago. He wants to find out why that happened.  The story is a real page turner and both my husband and I enjoyed it.

It tells of a British reporter’s trip to research and write about an ancient archeological site in Kurdish Turkey but it gets complicated.  At the same time a Scotland Yard detective tries to solve a series of brutal ritual killings occurring in the Britain.

The two stories intertwine but this is not for the fainthearted!  The story delivered a solid,  thought-provoking story with definite hints of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code. I have read a lot in the murder mystery genre but even for me the violence in this book was quite hard to read.

However, the violence is recreating historically accurate methods of human sacrifice from ancient cultures all over the world. It is disturbing to think about but it did happen. This is part of the whole crux of the  conclusion of the story. The Genesis Secret is certainly not for everybody, but I enjoyed it.

Valerie Penny