The Blood Gospel

This ponderous collaboration between Rollins (Bloodline) and Cantrell (A City of Broken Glass) opens with an arresting prologue set in first-century Israel. As the Jewish defenders of Masada prepare for their mass suicide, their leader, Eleazar, ritually sacrifices a young girl in a cave below the mountain fortress. Flash forward to the present, when a cataclysmic explosion destroys Masada, leaving as sole survivor a boy whose cancer was cured by the toxic smoke that emanated from below the mountain. At the request of the Israeli government, archeologist Erin Granger joins forces with Sgt. Jordan Stone, an American Army Ranger, to find out what caused the catastrophe. Add a peculiar Catholic priest and a lost gospel to the attractive male-female team and its quest for the truth, and you have yet another religious thriller with a gimmick that fails to match that of The Da Vinci Code. Agents: (for Rollins) Russ Galen and Danny Baror; (for Cantrell) Elizabeth Evans, Mary Alice Kier, and Anna Cottle. (Jan.)