Glenn Cooper - Library of the dead

review by showhost
Another charity shop buy and another first for me and this author.
It's a strange book. Time wise it jumps backwards and forwards from 2009 to 300AD to a929. At times it grabbed my attention then it let it go again......
300AD the Abbey, Vectis (IOWight). Brother Josephus has taken in the remaining twin of the 7th son of a 7th son. The child is very strange, fair skinned, giner hair, no speech, no interaction at all and toitally 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 the child 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 dtaes 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 subterranean rooms for him to work and sleep in and to keep the volumes of these 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 and FBI agent is near to early retirement but he is given a high profile job to crack - the Doomsday serial killer. Each murder is preceeded by a postcard with a coffin drawn on it.
1929, a group of archeaologists find the site of the old priory and the tomb of the library and 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 info stored there in 'Area 51', to make millions of dollars. The secret info is names & dates.
They are all obviously linked and it all comes together in the end.
At the end of the book is a chapter of his next book. I had a quick read but it smacks a lot of this one - its the sequel.....
I can't say I would rush to pick up one of his books again. His characters ddn't leave a lasting impression, there was too much unnecessary 'small talk', irrelevant detail - to pad out the story? And some of the grammer didn't make sense.
As I said earlier there were snatches of attention holding but then it would lapse again. It's classed as a thriller but it wasn't 'thrilling' enough for me.
I'm glad I finished it cos now I can look for another, hopefully better, book.