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30 Pieces of Silver: An Extremely Controversial Historical Thriller (The Betrayed Series Book 1) by [Carolyn McCray]

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Carolyn McCray

30 Pieces of Silver: An Extremely Controversial Historical Thriller (The Betrayed Series Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Carolyn McCray (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

3,195 ratings

Book 1 of 3: The Betrayed

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#1 Kindle Bestseller in BOTH Men's Adventure and War genres!

***Warning*** This books is an extremely controversial religious/historical thriller. Too controversial to be published in hardback. Please do NOT purchase this book if you were at all disturbed by DaVinci's revelations. However if you like your fiction to challenge historical events, read on...

"Carolyn McCray's 30 PIECES OF SILVER proves that Dan Brown's crown is up for grabs. Part minefield and all roller-coaster ride, here is a story as controversial as it is thriller. Hunker down for a long night because once you start this book you won't be putting it down."
James Rollins, NY Times bestseller of DEVIL COLONY

Other 5 out of 5 star reviews...
"In a single word? Brilliant!"
Kenneth Weinart

5 out of 5 stars
"This novel messed with my head, plain and simple."
John Hopkin
Thrillers Rock Twitter
Book Reviewer

"Wow! I am so impressed when a (relatively) new author creates such a compelling, exciting and potentially controversial novel. The action is non-stop, the locations are intriguing and the characters are appealing. There is tension, romance, harrowing escape after harrowing escape all weaved within a story that captures your interest and keeps you guessing until the very end when you are floored by a surprise hook followed by an even more unexpected uppercut of an ending."
MrNeil98
Book Reviewer

Overview of 30 PIECES OF SILVER...
A Christian suicide bomber.
John the Baptist's bones inscribed in ancient Greek.
A dark secret carried from the foot of the crucifixion.

Can science solve the world's greatest mystery?

More praise...
"30 PIECES OF SILVER truly makes Brown's Da Vinci look like a Sunday school lesson! Prepare to be shocked!"
Greg Barton
Taxes007

"If you are looking for globe-trotting adventure in pursuit of ancient secrets, check out Carolyn McCray'a 30 PIECES OF SILVER. This ambitious blend of religion, science, and para-military is sure to hook fans of the genre."
Amy B. Lundebrek

For anyone who hungers for some serious controversy and can't get enough of James Rollins, Dan Brown, Stever Berry, and Brad Thor... 30 PIECES OF SILVER is your next thrill fix!!!

Want more turbo adventure with Brandt and Rebecca? Check out the 1st cycle of the Betrayed series!
4 Full length novels book + 4 short stories, each action and controversial packed.

Continuing on, Brandt and Rebecca take a little break to build a home and a family. Not to worry! Davidson and Runny keep the thrills rolling and with Lopez around to keep the action turbo-charged, you are in for quite the ride in the Bull's Eye Sniper Chronicles!

Bursting back on the scene from their retirement, Brandt and Rebecca rejoin the team to take on bigger threats and even larger controversies in the 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed series.

Combined the three cycles contain over a MILLION words of heart-pounding adventure and scintillating controversy!

Want your thrills a little less controversial and a little more techno-oriented? Look up The Robin Hood Hacker series! Continent hopping action along with enough techno gadgets to keep Bill Gates up at night!

Like more grounded thrillers then dive into the Nuclear Thriller Threat series. Ever wonder exactly how much nuclear material goes missing every year (the number is shocking BTW), how much damage a dirty bomb could really do? Or how realistic a suitcase nuke is? Get these questions and so many more answered!

If you wanted to know more about Carolyn, join her newsletter, or request a SIGNED digital book cover please check out CarolynMccray.co4 Full length Nevels

Print length

535 pages
Language

English
Publication date

December 11, 2010
Reading age

13 - 18 years
Grade level

9 - 12
File size

11579 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Carolyn McCray's 30 Pieces of Silver proves that Dan Brown's crown is up for grabs. Part minefield and all roller-coaster ride, here is a story as controversial as it is thrilling. Hunker down for a long night because once you start this book you won't be putting it down." -- James Rollins, NY Times bestselling author of Bloodline

“The last three pages of the story rank as one of the most shocking and unexpected conclusions I have ever experienced. I was speechless – and I can’t think of any better praise to give than that.I highly recommend 30 Pieces of Silver.” -- TheWordZombie.com

“I cannot say enough good things about this book! I started reading this book and found myself taking it everywhere I went just to finish it. McCray has you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.” –- ThePenMuse.net

“Highly recommended if you like action-adventure thrillers, searching for archaeological mysteries and religious themes.” -- MysteryThriller.tv --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Overview of 30 Pieces of Silver... A Christian suicide bomber. John the Baptist's bones inscribed in ancient Greek. A dark secret carried from the foot of the crucifixion. Can science solve the world's greatest mystery? --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004HB1W82
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 11, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 11579 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 535 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #484,565 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,530 in Technothrillers (Kindle Store)
- #2,245 in Technothrillers (Books)
- #3,621 in Men's Adventure Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
3,195 ratings

About the author

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Carolyn McCray

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Carolyn has had a long and extremely interesting road to become a bestseller.

When she head to veterinary school those many years ago she had no idea decades later she would be writing controversial historical thrillers, gut wrenching mysteries and roller coaster-style action/adventure tales!

Born in San Francisco and raised in the beautiful Napa Valley, Carolyn always had an overactive imagination. As a child you could usually find her dragging the neighborhood children out to the haunted barn to make her Nancy Drew-style audio tapes. Oh and did she mention, there was an entire life-sized recreation of the nativity scene in the rafters? Yeah, that wasn't just a little creepy.

Which of course was great practice for writing such blockbusters as Plain Jane: A Patterson-style thriller with a dash of Hannibal and 30 Pieces of Silver: An Extremely Controversial Historical Thriller.

Carolyn is honored to have a seven book contract with Amazon's mystery and thriller imprint, Thomas & Mercer along with being one of the eight books during the inaugural launch of Amazon's new Serial program (9th Circle).

With nearly 700,00 books sold, Carolyn now lives on a beautiful lake in the Pacific Northwest where the fog rolls in over the water, snuffing out all signs of life around her. Yep, she still loves the creepy!

Customer reviews

5 star		39%
4 star		25%
3 star		15%
2 star		9%
1 star		12%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Margaret C.

Murder and mayhem set in a very odd history of early Europe

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2015

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30 Pieces of Silver by Carolyn McCray follows the conventional thriller formula in which boy and girl follow the trail of some object (usually religious) across many countries while being chased by the bad guys who win every confrontation except the last. In this one girl is a scientist, onstantinople as Constantine's Holy boy is accompanied by his black ops team and the bad guys come from a secret organization called the Knot. The object of the search is a series of bones of the Holy Family, on which the Knot has engraved very obscure directions to lead searchers on to the next burial. The scene shifts rapidly from the Ecuadorian jungles to the Eiffel Tower to Budapest, Constantinople and Rome with lots of violence and high body counts until the controversial skeleton is found. Lovers of mayhem will enjoy this book. Lovers of good writing will will hate it as will lovers of historic accuracy. The writing consists of ungrammatical and sometimes extremely convoluted sentences such as "Finding her laptop under her arm, gunfire sounded all around... or "Finally Lochum would receive what they so richly deserved." What is even worse is her view of history. The author announces that Romans took over Jerusalem in 60AD, after writing scenes describing Judea under Roman rule in Christ's boyhood. Then she continues with the announcement that about this time Emperor Constantine moved the Roman capital to Constantinople which is rather odd considering that Constantine was not born until 272 AD and Constantinople wasn't built until about 330 AD. She describes the Hagia Sophia (built around 532 AD) as the seat of Constantine's holy powers even though Constantine died in 337AD This odd view of history goes on to refer to the city as Constantine's Holy Roman Empire. That is a whole other story set in Sixth Century Europe. My eyes finally glazed over, I stopped taking notes and whimpered my way through the rest of the book.

69 people found this helpful

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Kelly

Not a book for Christians

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2020

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What I liked - Well written, fast-paced with lots of action with just the right amount of humor and romance. In the beginning I was intrigued with the premise despite the creative license taken with the history of Jesus in childhood (not at all biblically accurate) and read the entire book.

What I didn't like - SPOILER ALERT! The book is so historically inaccurate that it is painful to read at times. This book ends with our savior Jesus being the Judas and Judas taking his place on the cross because Jesus couldn't face what was coming. As if the author is trying to denounce Jesus as the savior of mankind and presented him as a total fraud. If you are a christian and know Jesus to be your savior this book will only make you mad. I will not bother to read the rest of the series.

In a nutshell, this is an awful book if you are a christian and/or a history buff.

One person found this helpful

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Denny

Better than Dan Brown

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2016

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I loved the combination of history, religion and suspense.
Some Christians might consider the content heresy, but it's fiction so if you take it at face value it's an exciting what if. The author has researched the history and archaeology relevant to the premise and it lends an air of authenticity to the story, however, it's primarily a thriller, a very good thriller that kept me wanting to read more. It was difficult to put down.

The plot involves the supposition that the bones of Christ might exist. It comes from the perspective of various groups or individuals each with their own agendas. One is trying to protect a secret, two want to build their reputations on exposing the secret but are looking to prove different scientific theories, and I'm not sure what the agenda of the American government is, but it's special agents are key to the plot.

Apart from an annoying phrase that does not make sense (perhaps it's an Americanism), "Off the seargent's look, she did ... " which I think means, "Following the seargent's look ..." The book is very well written.

Character development is usually second to the plot in the thriller genre, but the two main characters are reasonably well drawn. I knew more about them, and knew them better by the end of the story than the beginning.

Literary devices are put to good use. The use of metaphors is satisfying and adds to archaelogical and historical perspectives.

The lines between good guys and bad guys could be more blurred, but the different motivations of the individuals is sufficiently developed to make up for this.

All in all, a great thriller that left me thinking about the historical roots of the Christian church.

10 people found this helpful

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St. James

Carolyn McCray is not Dan Brown

Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2013

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When James Rolling implies in his review (quoted by Amazon) that Carolyn McCray is in league with Dan Brown he must mean that the plot and some of the characters of 30 Pieces of Silver are very similar to that of The Da Vinci Code. But that's it. You can steal Dan Brown's plots but it doesn't make you king. You can steal his characters too and it still doesn't make you king.

The trick with writing historical novels is research. You take known historical characters and fill in biographical gaps with fictional events that can pass as true for the normal reader. Same with landmarks and architecture. And the facts have to be correct. Carolyn McCray's characters are fictional so no problem there. That's more than can be said about architecture and landmarks which play a central part in the book. There she gets the facts frequently wrong as with historical facts. Many people use the internet to look at photos and check facts when reading historical fiction. I do. And here many facts are way off.

And how the fellowship of the professor bomb famous landmarks, blow up ancient buildings in the middle of central areas and shoot down airplanes over heavily guarded airports. It's all too much for me.

Sorry I can't rate you higher.

50 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Judi Moore

A novel of interesting ideas, riffing on the Crucifixion stories which have come down to us

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 24, 2019

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This is a really interesting novel. It is definitely in Dan Brown’s wheelhouse. If you like esoteric mysteries you will enjoy this.

Its controversial aspect is presumably that it revisits and recasts the Crucifixion story, to good effect, and gives Judas a different motivation. I have re-examined Judas’s supposed betrayal myself in fiction, so am glad to see him getting a better press.

I have to tell you, the novel is too long at 535 pp, which makes it flabby in places. As a consequence there are a number of unfocused bits that, frankly, make no sense. Do not bother puzzling over them, they’re not important. Do not, either, pause to engage more than once with the beauties of Buda and Pest which are described in detail, then described again, and then some more. You don’t need to linger over any of this stuff – just keep going, because this is a page turner of a novel for more than one reason. The ideas in it are fascinating.

The whole thing pretty much hangs together, and it is a wild ride. Although I did have a laugh out loud moment which I’m pretty sure the author didn’t intend, and some difficulty with people getting up and carrying on as if nothing had happened after being seriously wounded. The almost-sex is good too. Enjoy.

*

If anyone is interested in my own take on Judas, ‘Judas the Iscariot’ can be found in my volume of short stories, Ice Cold Passion, on Amazon, paperback or Kindle:

One person found this helpful

Linda

Sadly not good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2018

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Having read some of the reviews expressing how bad this book was I was extremely dubious about reading it, but as I have an open mind and my husband told me he was enjoying it, I thought I would give it a go. Sadly, I can now confirm that I totally agree with all those bad reviews and can add my own comments. Basically, the story line itself sounded intriguing and I really was looking forward to seeing where it was going to take me. However, the book itself is very badly written – poor sentence construction, childish and immature phrases and very shallow characters, none of whom gave me any reason to want to continue reading. In places I felt that this story had been written by two different authors as the sections about Judas and Jesus were much more maturely and carefully written as compared to the passages about Monroe and Locham, which seemed childish and rushed.

I stopped reading this story before I even got a quarter of the way into it which made me feel very sad as I really don’t like to give up on a book if I can help it. Unfortunately, I just found it so painful I couldn’t continue.

One person found this helpful

gordon

Errrrrr

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2020

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I have romsay that as an asventure story it excels. However the linking of Christianity and heresay, ancient history and fiction really had me worried in case any reader thought it was all fact. Having said that I could nor put the book down. Well written, but beware.

One person found this helpful

curly_helmar

Readable but not realistic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 28, 2012

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I nearly didn't download this book because the subtitle phrase 'extremely controversial' rang warning bells: I smelt the whiff of desperation.
However, since it was a freebie at the time I took the risk.

This is a book in the Dan Brown genre. I found the historical premise interesting and would have liked more of the book to have been set in the past, exploring this in more depth. I do not have a strong faith but anyone who does may find the premise distasteful.

The current day story was of the action thriller movie kind, with heroes (and villains) who are seemingly indestructable. I don't necessarily see this as a problem, as long as the reader can accept the 'Saturday matinee' tradition and take the action scenes with a vat of salt. There were too many of these shoot 'em up passages for me.

Despite this, and given that my expectations were not particularly high, I found this readable, and it kept me engaged enough to want to find out how it ended. Whilst I don't regret reading it I don't think I will bother with the sequels.

10 people found this helpful

scott

Really quite bad....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2018

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Very badly written and researched.

Minor spoilers below...

The book is full of unrealistic and incorrect statements... For example, when faced with collapsed and twisted girders the author says the only way they are getting through is with an Arc Welder.... This is used to join metal, not separate it.

And a special forces operative could fire his automatic weapon faster than the manufacturer states... Presumably by pulling the trigger faster than firing on full auto.

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