Absolute Proof by Peter James

1.5 Stars

First things first I need to get a few things straight:

I am somewhat on the fence about the whole God/Intelligent Designer thing.
Organised Religion gives me the heebie jeebies and I think History bears me out as to why; not to mention modern day atrocities committed in the name of one God or another.
I genuinely enjoyed The Da Vinci Code.
I have no problem with fantastical novels - after all I gave 5 Stars to Michael Rutger's The Anomaly!

Now that is out of the way I am going to confess and say I hated this book.  I did manage to read it all but it was a good job it was in the stave format from The Pigeonhole as I could portion out the ridiculousness.  I was rather sceptically going along with it all (not because of the Religious aspects to the book but rather the main character, Ross Hunter's actions) and then the author showed a basic misunderstanding of Mitrochondrial DNA - numerous times he mentioned it was only in the female line - no it is passed intact through the female line but it is present in all creatures that have a cell structure.  As soon as I hit that road bump I realised that the research done for this book was a little scant.

The only quotes from Religious texts we get are from the King James' version of the New Testament and only then from Matthew and Revelation.  The Qu'Ran is dealt with in seeping statements and none of the other Abrahamic Religious texts (the Torah for example) even get a look in.  Considering the subject matter and constant mention of all the different Religions that have broadly similar beliefs you would have thought there would be more from them - but no.

Using Glastonbury as a location is simply lazy.  I understand that it is a mythologized location but really, that is done to death now and shows a simple lack of imagination.  Even worse is how things pan out there, completely unbelievable (okay so The Da Vinci Code isn't exactly believable but it is tautly written and this really isn't).

The main character is supposed to be this high flying investigative journalist.  Why then is he so credulous and naive?  He seems intent to rehash what is going on to anyone that so much as looks at him when you would think he would be keeping his cards close to his chest.  His deductive leaps that the finds at Glastonbury and in Egypt are remnants of Jesus Christ are farcical and that then becomes canonical for the remaining third or so of the book - all that is proven are that there is a genetic match.  No caveat that with the age of the samples and natural degradation that so few alleles would be recovered that a match is tenuous at best.  I am not even sure that DNA extraction from a single tooth of the supposed age of this one would reveal enough DNA to test but found that I couldn't even dig up the wherewithal to research the current advances in extraction technology.

In short avoid this book.  It has a meandering and unconvincing plot, characters that are simply laughable (even the peripherals such as Ainsley Bloor, Big Tony - yes, REALLY, Harry F Cook and Wesley Wenceslas are all caricatures) and so many holes in the research that it is really a chore to read. 

Apologies to you if you loved the book but there was so much I just couldn't get past with this one and we will have to agree to disagree.

THIS IS A REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK READ THROUGH THE PIGEONHOLE