The Atlantis Code

The novelty of Brokaw's debut, which links the Catholic Church and Atlantis, isn't enough to redeem this religious thriller. Evil forces associated with a Machiavellian cardinal, Stefano Murani, target hunky archeologist Thomas Lourds in the belief that he has stumbled on a valuable artifact in Alexandria, Egypt. Leslie Crane, the requisite good-girl love interest, interviews Lourds for a TV documentary. After Murani's minions butcher the show's producer, Lourds and Crane go on the run. Aided by the bad-girl love interest, police inspector Natashya Safarov, they travel to Moscow, Leipzig and Senegal. Two big revelations—that the artifact may be connected to Atlantis and that the legendary lost continent may be linked to a revisionist version of an Old Testament account—will get few readers' pulses racing, especially since Brokaw relies more on shoot-outs and narrow escapes than plausible archeological details to carry his story along. (Nov.)