CRUCIBLE

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition. Especially when there’s
AI involved in the brouhaha.

Blame it on Umberto Eco: For
every one, soaring Name of the Rose, there are a dozen books
of Da Vinci Code depths, with medieval voodoo tangled up with
modern steely-jawed heroes, priests and demons, international espionage, and
all the rest. Rollins (The Bone Labyrinth, 2015, etc.) has a corner
on part of this market with his Sigma Force franchise, in which steely-jawed Cmdr.
Gray Pierce and his sidekicks stalk the world searching for and neutralizing
evildoers. Apparently the bad guys who steal his pregnant S.O. (significant
other and/or special operative, as you will) didn’t get the memo that Gray is
not to be trifled with, but then they’re no slouches: They’re bent on—well,
world conquest, maybe, but certainly on getting rid of their enemies, a bunch
of witchy women with Ph.D.’s and feminist ideas who hang out in—or under, that
is—“the only existing example of a medieval prison in all of Portugal.” Not to
be outdone in the subterranean department, the bad guys, who wear priestly
collars and veils and all but are still whiz-kid hackers, have a clubhouse
underneath Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris (“Of course, the Crucible would pick
such a spot”), while Gray and his cohort tootle around on the D.C. Metro
and suchlike venues assembling the wherewithal to go kick clerical butt,
real-time and virtual. Chopsocky, MRI scans, tumbling helicopters, incunabula,
grimoires, USB-C cables—Rollins pulls out all the stops in a tale that hints at
not just Eco, but also Stieg Larsson in making one of its principals a
brilliant young woman programmer who is probably better suited to the Castile
of El Cid than Capitol Hill but still knows how to use smart machines the right
way. Or does she? It depends on which side of the Witch Hammer one falls….

Another mindless entertainment to fill time better spent with
Monty Python—or Indiana Jones.