Glenn Cooper - Library of the Dead

review by showhost
Another charity shop buy and another first for this author. It's a strange book. Time wise it jumps backwards and forwards from 2009 to 300AD to 1929. At times it grabbed my attention then it let go again......
300AD an abbey, Vectis (Isle of Wight). Brother Josephus has taken in the remaining unwanted twin of the 7th son of a 7th son. The child is very strange, fair skinned, ginger hair, no speech, no interaction at all and totally uneducated, yet he draws symbols in the dirt earth. The Abbott is intrigued what the symbols are for. In a moment of inspiration they give him a quill and parchment paper. He writes and doesn't stop...his pages are full of names, from all over the world, and dates either of their birth or death. These dates cover hundreds/thousands of years in the future.
The brethren feel he is sent from God, to register these events. They dig and extend the church to provide a subterranean room for him to work & sleep in and to keep the volumes of records. The church bring in young girls to keep this strange boys lineage going, the off-spring are all born looking the same and all perpetually write.
2009, Will Piper an FBI agent is near to early retirement but he is given a high profile job to crack the 'Doomsday' serial killer. Each murder is preceded by a postcard with a coffin drawn on it.
1929, a group of archaeologists find the site of the old priory and the tomb of the library but also a tomb of hundreds of human bones.
Back to 2009 and Will Piper meets up with a computer geek from his college days who works on a secret location in Nevada. He has found a way to smuggle out the Top Secret information stored there in Area 51, to make millions of dollars. The secret info is names and dates.
They are all obviously inexorably linked and it all comes together in the end.

At the end of this book is a chapter, a prologue, of his next book. I had a quick read but it smacks a lot of this one!
He is not an author I would reach for again. His characters didn't leave a lasting impression, there was too much 'small' talk, irrelevant detail, to pad out the story? And some of the grammar didn't make sense. As I said earlier there were snatches of attention holding but then it would fade again, it's classed as a thriller but it wasn't 'thrilling' enough for me.
I did want to finish it rather than give up on it. And I'm glad I have finished it cos now I can look for another, hopefully better book!