The Vatican Secret
Peter Hogenkamp
April 15th 2021
Published by Bookouture
There is a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Vatican City’s deadliest enemy. And time is running out to stop an attack…
Marco Venetti, the only man the pope trusts, has tracked down the traitor who nearly succeeded in his mission to kill the pope. But the traitor holds a crucial piece of information: the name of the Russian mafioso in possession of a nuclear bomb.
Forced to work with a man he despises to prevent a deadly explosion, Marco sets a trap for the Russians. Inside the stone walls of an ancient castle in Portugal, surrounded by high mountains, he waits to ambush his target. But a double-cross ruins everything and he must flee, alone and without backup, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind.
All Marco knows is that the attack is imminent. And that to prevent it, he must enter a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that will take him across the continent, on land and by sea. With time running out, he will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Because the secrets inside the Vatican may be the deadliest threat of all…
The Vatican Secret is an explosive thriller full of treachery, international conspiracy and non-stop action. Fans of Joel C. Rosenberg, Tom Clancy and Steven Konkoly will be completely gripped.
My Review:
The Vatican Secret is not my typical read and it was so fun to step outside of my comfort zone. This book is action packed and will keep you flipping the pages to see the final outcome and piece together the mystery at hand. This is the second book in the Marco Venetti thriller series and there was a bit of backstory and piecing together what happened in the first book. While it seems to have picked up where they left off this is one I definitely think I would have liked to read the first book before the second (I have a habit of giving a book in a series a try when it comes out to see what I think about the series in general).
The steaks are high in this story with a nuclear weapon falling into the wrong hands, plans to smuggle it into the Vatican, potential spies hidden within the good guys and a plot to assassinate the pope. The schemes, twists and turns are endless in The Vatican Secret. I was highly entertained while I read this one and pleasantly surprised with several outcomes through out the book.
Author Bio:
Peter Hogenkamp was born in upstate New York and attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. (Go Crusaders!) He graduated in 1986 and was exiled to Europe for three years by his premedical adviser, for which he will be grateful the rest of his days. Spending the next three years – supposedly – teaching chemistry and algebra in Salzburg, Austria, he traveled extensively, drank a lot of beer and made many a lifelong friend. In his travels, he found dozens of great places for scenes in a thriller: castles perched on cliffs; monasteries tucked away in alpine valleys; villages built above rocky coastlines; cities soaked in history. When he isn’t writing or hiking with his strong-willed Cairn Terrier, Hermione, Peter practices medicine with his lovely wife, Lisa (who does most of the heavy lifting), hosts Your Health Matters, which airs on cable television, streams on YouTube and sounds off on podcast, and tends to the needs of his four children.
Author Social Media Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook
Leave a Reply