The Debt by Glenn Cooper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Debt is third installment in the Cal Donovan series. I received a copy from NetGalley and Severn House Publisher in exchange for an honest review. Cal Donovan is a colorful, intelligent man who appears to be damaged, but, the reader does not really find out how and why until The Debt. I was interested enough in this series that I backtracked and purchased the first 2 books and I will have to double back and read those. The title sort of speaks for itself. The Vatican finds itself owing a debt which was undertaken many years ago from the Sassoon bank. It was not an ordinary debt because the leaders of the Church committed some horrible crimes to find themselves in the place they are in this book.

Cal has a sort of associate friendship that is developing as the series continues and he has been given exceptional rights to almost all the archives and libraries of the Church. He is a scholar at a university that requires research and publishing and he is working on his next work which leads him to find the papers that start everything in this book. He goes right to the Celestine with his findings and the reader is shown just how far some of the leaders of the Church are willing to go to protect what they think is most important, the treasures of the Church which have been gifted and collected over the years. This pope is reminiscent of the current pope who sees the role of the Church as serving the underprivileged and poor in society. Pope Celestine understands the risk of what he is undertaking but sees his calling as protecting the Church's calling which is rooted in the Bible and not in the hoarding of treasures even if it means bankrupting the Church.

The Debt is a great mystery and thriller which does a great job of reminding the reader of the contentious relationship that has existed between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. It is always great to see stories that look at the history of that relationship and combine it with fiction. It is a great read and I cannot wait for the next installment. But, in the meantime, I have 2 books to backtrack and read before the next Cal Donovan story.