'Da Vinci' knockoff sins against sense

Clayton Moore, Special to the News

Published August 18, 2006 at midnight

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It's hard to separate fact from fiction when it comes to books these days, especially in the highly charged, post-Da Vinci Code publishing world that's raking in readers' dollars. How on earth does a discerning fan of fact-based thrillers separate the wheat from the chaff?

The truth certainly won't be found in Kathleen McGowan's overwrought, desperately somber examination of Mary Magdalene's story in The Expected One.

The first of an anticipated fictitious trilogy from the amateur scholar and former journalist, this breathless tale might have been better served as a frothy beach read. But the author's zealous claims - she's told The Sunday Times and USA Today among others that she is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ - put a bizarre spin on an otherwise harmless adventure novel.

McGowan claims the story is based on real events. Her alter ego, who propels the story, is journalist and teacher Maureen Pascal. Maureen's sole mission in life is to prove that much of history is a lie concocted by an anti-woman conspiracy by the male religious and historical hierarchy.

"Let's take it from the top," she tells her class. "Marie Antoinette never said 'let them eat cake,' Lucrezia Borgia never poisoned anyone and Mary Queen of Scots was not a murderous whore. By righting these wrongs, we take the first steps toward restoring women to their proper and respected place in history - a place that has been usurped by generations of historians with a political agenda."

While traveling in Jerusalem, Maureen's life takes a strange turn when she's bequeathed an unusual ring by an exotic shopkeeper near the Stations of the Cross. From that simple act, an arcane conspiracy starts to envelop Maureen, her partner-in-crime Tammy and her quick-witted cousin, Father Peter Healy.

She's invited to an odd costumed ball in southern France by Magdalene scholar Lord Berenger Sinclair, who unveils a bewildering alternate version of biblical history that paints Mary as the wife of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ by turns, not to mention a mother of three.

This telltale meeting sends Maureen and her hardy band of travelers on a worldwide search for the Arques Gospel of Mary Magdalene, a set of scrolls long rumored to exist that detail her life and marriages, tribulations and spiritual triumph.

Maureen's worldwide hunt for clues is interspersed with sequences from Mary's tale, put forth in easy-to-read, completely unconvincing modern prose. Even with its flawed presentation, the book-within-a-book is more persuasive in building a plausible Mary Magdalene than the overarching book is in breathing life into Maureen, whose stilted dialogue and bland character stand in stark contrast to her bold deeds.

Back in the present, Maureen has been anointed "The Expected One," a neo-religious prophet figure whose purpose is to reveal Mary's history to the world. She's soon caught in a protracted, made-for-TV rivalry between factions of zealous followers: a band of "the bloodline," who, like Maureen (and presumably McGowan), are descended from Jesus Christ; and a malevolent group descended from John the Baptist, who was beheaded by Herod.

McGowan claims to have been researching this preposterous epic, which links everyone from Botticelli to King Arthur, for the past 20 years, but its resemblance to Dan Brown's best-seller is utterly transparent. That's the problem with being at the tail end of a fad. The Expected One's religious controversies, cloak-and-dagger secret societies and masculine conspiracies are old hat by now, and their inclusion in McGowan's plodding, convoluted thriller don't do much to elevate her pedestrian novel.

The Expected One doesn't hold up to even the slightest critical examination, whether it portrays itself as a fanciful fairy tale or true history, in fictionalized form. One mostly wishes this claptrap flight of the imagination had been buried like one of the artifacts that drive its inane plot. There's certainly no treasure to be had here.

Clayton Moore is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Kirkus Reviews, Dirty Linen, Bookslut and Paste Magazine. He lives in Centennial.

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