The Abomination by Jonathan Holt
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Feminism and war crimes and politics, conspiracy theories and cyber space and corruption, Venice and Croatia and a tiny haunted island, the mafia, the Catholic church, and sex. The Abomination has it all.
I saw the cover of this book in a shop, was intrigued by a blurb that said it was about hackers in Venice, put it on my to-read list, and was surprised when the library had it ready for me almost immediately. The point is, there was some momentum involved in getting me into the book before I had time to know better.
Because for all those subject I mentioned above, The Abomination doesn’t really go very deeply into any of them. It’s a meager treatment of any of them at all, although Jonathan Holt, to his credit, balances them all out and makes them work together.
As thrillers go, The Abomination nearly satisfies. It’s sort of like Dan Brown mixed with Stieg Larsson. But with better sentence craft than Brown and fewer sexual deviants than Larson. And it’s the first book in a trilogy, so for book-eaters looking for a drawn-out feast, as least there’s that.
Personally, I’ll probably pass on the sequels. Maybe I’ll watch the film versions when they come out.