Customer Reviews

The Third Secret

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(49)
3 star:		(38)
2 star:		(38)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

Steve Berry's "The Third Secret" is a blending together of religious fact with fiction to create a creditable thriller based upon doctrines set forth by the Vatican.

An appariton of the Virgin Mary observed by 3 peasant children in 1917 Fatima, Portugal and the disclosures made by her form the crux of the plot of the novel. The Virgin purportedly revealed 3 secrets, two of which were revealed by one of the children named Lucia. The third secret, however remained concealed within the walls of the Vatican only observed by papal eyes until its revelation in the year 2000.

Father Colin Michener, papal secretary to present pope Clement XV has served the former Cardinal of Cologne faithfully for years. They forged a father son relationship and Michener was concerned by the popes behavior. Pope Clement had been spending an inordinate amount of time in the Riserva, a Vatican library whose contents were reserved for papal use only. Clement was a progressive pope altering rather than sticking to the old doctrines of the Vatican.

Vatican Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Valendrea was at odds with Pope Clement. Having narrowly lost the papacy in the last conclave, Valendrea with lofty aspirations to become pope, favored a return to the princples of the past. Valendrea was a corrupt man using eavesdropping devices he had installed in the Vatican to keep members of the college of cardinals in line.

Pope Clement became aware that the third secret of Fatima stored in the Reserva seemed incomplete. He recruited Father Michener to discover the missing segment of the secret by travelling to Romania to speak with a Father Tibor, the original translator of the account of the peasant girl Lucia.

Berry leads us on a trail of adventure and intrigue as on one hand the true meaning of the secret is trying to be revealed. At the same time forces lead by the conservative Cardinal Valendrea are attempting to suppress its contents. The plot is at times uneven but the religious history, when woven into the story is fascinating.

Steve Berry is known for his historic-based fiction thrillers, and The Third Secret follows his usual formula. While definitely entertaining, the plot defies belief.

Father Colin Michener is the papal secretary for Pope Clement XV. Clement is obsessed with the visitations of the Virgin Mary at La Salette, Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje. He is especially intent on discovering the third secret of Fatima. Clement sends Michener to Romania and Bosnia in his efforts to uncover the truth. But there is another powerful member of the Vatican Curia who has knowledge of the third secret. He is so fearful of it coming to light that he has resorted to wiretapping, blackmail and even murder.

Berry weaves this tale around Roman Catholic history. In addition to the visitations, he also uses the predictions of St. Malachy of the 16th Century, Irish birthing centers in the 20th Century, and the procedures for papal succession. While the historic aspects were interesting, the plot was a stretch. Without giving away the plot, Fatima's third secret (as revealed in this book) is just totally unbelievable and would change almost all the core beliefs of the Roman Church. Most of the characters are also a bit over the top. Michener, an ordained priest and lawyer, is way too gullible. His former girlfriend, Katerina Lew, is totally self-centered and not very likable. Cardinal Alberto Valendrea is too Machiavellian, and his assistant, Paolo Ambrosi acts more like a Nazi SS officer than a priest.

While The Third Secret was a fast-paced thriller that kept my interest, it is not of the same caliber as other books of this genre including The DaVinci Code.

Even with the stereotypes (good pope - bad secretary of state; good conflicted priest - evil murderous unconflicted priest, etc), this isn't so bad if you like the genre of lost secrets (or in some books, lost manuscripts) found, eternal battle of good and evil, etc. I thought the author's handling of why Lucia didn't contradict the published secret very well done. There were some historical inaccuracies, but who cares. This is just a good summer mystery and held together enough for me to read it straight through in an afternoon.

A colleage recently recommended this book to me when we were on a business trip together. While traveling, she and I (both Catholics) discussed how change in the Church happens from within. Someday, we hope to see a Pope from Africa or South America who reflects the changing face of the Faithful. Someday, we wonder if women will be able to have a stronger role in the Church. It was during this discussion that my colleague mentioned THE THIRD SECRET and said that it focused on an African Pope. She also mentioned that the book was wholly irreverent, but that she enjoyed it. I had enjoyed The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, so I thought this might be worth a spin, too.

I stayed up until 1 a.m. last night to finish THE THIRD SECRET. It was a good yarn up until Chapter 65, which -- as noted in other reviews -- the big whopper of a secret was revealed. Perhaps someday (likely not in our lifetimes) women will be allowed to celebrate Mass, or the celibacy vow might be overturned. Despite secular pressures I doubt we will ever see the Church wholeheartedly embrace same-sex marriage and abortion. I mean, come on, this IS the Catholic Church we're talking about here. And to have Mary, the Mother of God, say this stuff? Steve, buddy, that's waaaaaay over the top. It would have been much more plausible to stick with the plot thread of priests debating and doubting their vow to the Holy Order. Having that stuff come out of Mary's mouth is just too crazy for even this "liberal, progressive" Catholic.

2 stars: One for Chapters 1-64, and another because I stayed up half the night to finish the book.

[Warning: SPOILERS ahead] This is a good read. It moves along at a fast pace, it deals with a real-life mystery (because the prophecy, when revealed in 2000, really didn't seem inflammatory enough to justify being kept secret for so long), and the wealth of detail about Vatican politics and procedures - however much of it may be accurate - is fascinating. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants mystery and excitement, in a book that's hard to put down, with some history lessons and thought-provoking controversy thrown in.

But there are a couple of irritants.

First, the writing style. Why does so much of the novel have to be written in the pluperfect tense? We are constantly reading `he'd done this' or `she'd said that', and the effect is that most of the book seems to be a series of recollections. A few flashbacks are fine, but this is overdone. And breaking up the narrative so that we switch back and forward between characters, each time leaving one at a cliffhanger moment, is a standard technique, but again, it becomes tiresome when it is done so repetitively. You feel like you're watching a TV show that has too many commercial breaks.

Second, the endorsement of abortion in Mary's messages is done in a heavy-handed way that makes you wonder if it was a last minute addition. `Hey, I've got away with having the Mother of God endorse priestly marriage, female priests, and homosexuality (though I think Berry is a bit ambivalent about that one - see below), maybe I can throw abortion in as well'. The desirability of priests being free to marry was well set up in the plot, but abortion just comes out of left field at the last minute. Unless the descriptions of the Irish birthing centres and Michener's own adopted childhood are meant to have prepared the way - but this necessarily require Michener to conclude that his own life would have been better if he had never had the chance to live it, which would seem to involve a degree of muddle-headedness that even he never quite descends to.

Nor is the justification given for the approval of abortion at all convincing. I'm saying nothing about whether abortion should be acceptable to Christians or not, only that the way Berry chooses to have Mary justify it is ridiculous. If the Mother of God were to announce that abortion were permissible, it is very hard to imagine that she would do so by saying `know that your body is yours', since this is directly contrary to a rather important Christian doctrine that your body is, in fact, not yours to do with as you wish at all: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body." (1 Cor 7:2). There may well be respectable arguments for abortion that could be used within a Christian context, but it's hard to see how `your body is your own' could be one of them.

And for Mary to be made to say that `I freely chose to be the mother of God' is somewhat ludicrous. Is this meant to mean that Mary could have chosen, after the angel had visited her and informed her that she was to be the mother of God, and the Holy Spirit had come upon her and made her pregnant, to have had an abortion, and that God wouldn't have been even a little bit annoyed with her at that point?

Then there's homosexuality. The only obviously homosexual character in the novel is the evil Ambrosi, whose homosexuality seems to serve no purpose in the plot except to enable Katerina to get in a crude jibe (`I piss sitting down, so I doubt I'm your type'). And while Mary enthusiastically embraces abortion, she is much more guarded when it comes to this topic: `why persecute the man or woman who loves differently from others'. Saying that homosexual people should not be `persecuted' is not much at all; it falls a long way short of saying that homosexuality is not wrong. If God really wanted to tell the Roman Catholic church that homosexuality was not a sin, rather than merely that sinners should not be tormented, he'd probably use less ambiguous language. So I was left wondering what message Berry really wanted to give about homosexuality.

Ultimately, while I enjoyed the book (apart from the standard of the writing), the ending was always going to be a letdown. Four hundred pages of build-up of conspiracy theory, over protection of a secret preserved at the cost of lives over decades, demands an awful lot, and - just as with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code or Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum - there's a risk that the secret, when finally revealed, won't live up to the promise. But the journey to get there is quite a lot of fun.

The characters in Berry's novel seem to be computer generated, as does the story itself. Once again, the evil Catholic Church has hidden the "truth" from a blind & stupid laity, who must be recued by the liberal elite. Those priests, bishops & nuns who have failed to live up to their vows due to their exclusive knowledge of what "Truth" is, i.e. "situational".

Berry quotes extensively from scripture in this piece of work. He even quotes a scripture that makes his whole story just plain silly. "What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven & what you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven." Guess he overlooked that one because, after all, most of us loyal to the Church, are too dumb & blind to "catch it". I'm an old woman now, so I'll just stick to my ongoing conversations with Jesus through the Eucharist, the rosary, & just plain "listening". By the way Steve, Jesus loves you...but, He's not too fond of the way you presented His Mother.

Kathleen Riney

Troy, Tx.

Although The Third Secret is the first and only book I have bought and/or read from Steve Berry, I was not impressed. The first two thirds of the book was written well. The book bviously puts the Catholic church in a very bad light. The mysterious untold portion of the third secret (which is what keeps you reading the book) was so bizaar and completely rediculous that it blew away any semblance of believability that the reader may have had up to that point. What a severe let down. Fiction of this type has to retain some trace of believablity even to the end. I can not recommend this book.

This book is contrived, poorly written, and far-fetched. It casts Church conservatives as evil and diabolical men trying to thwart the will of God by hiding and/or destroying the revelations from Fatima and Medjugorie. It turns out that the 'revelations' are based on God's dissatisfaction with Church doctrine in areas that liberals are always whiny about.

**Spoiler below**

So the repeated appearances of the Virgin Mary were due to her anger that the Church opposed homosexual marriage, abortion, female priests, and allowing priests to marry and have families. How lame and predictable. Terrible book and a waste of time.

Painfully, painfully, painfully bad! At first it's just the bad writing and the stock cardboard characters. If you're looking for psychological nuance or complexity, don't open this book. Thank God the author spared us the love scenes! But by the time the secrets are revealed, the book has descended into a comic awfulness reserved for only the greatest bad books. I was writhing and groaning on my couch. If your book club is used to reading good books, have them read this one sometime, and then sit around like the guys in Mystery Science Theater and have a great time poking fun at it. But hey, it was a best seller! Says a lot about us doesn't it?!

The book starts out pretty good. The idea of political wrangling in the Vatican is kind of interesting, whether or not it actually works that way in real life. And the idea of there being a missing piece to the Third Secret of Fatima makes for an interesting plot device. However, in the end that's all it is.

The Secret, when finally revealed, didn't seem to warrant all the troubles that it supposedly caused. I was left wondering... if that's the big Secret, why bother trying to hide it? It would be much easier to just reveal it and renounce it as a fraud. Afterall, only devout Catholics believe in Marian apparitions to begin with, and wouldn't such people be quick to accept the Church's judgement if they said it wasn't genuine? Therefore, the whole premise of the plot was sort of spoiled for me. For this, I take off one star.

To make matters worse, the book describes a whole series of unbelievable (or at least highly unlikely) events. Also, characters in the book (including the hero) do things that seem very out of character. The overall effect is that it becomes very difficult to suspend one's disbelief. So, I have to take off another star.

I still found the book interesting. However, I think it could have been better.