More about he Fifth Gospel

I'm about half way done with The Fifth Gospel: A Novel by Ian Caldwell and I like it a lot. Here's a bit from a blurb at the Amazon page ...

In 2004, as Pope John Paul II’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. That same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex, desperate to keep his family safe, undertakes his own investigation. To find the killer he must reconstruct the dead curator’s secret: what the four Christian gospels—and a little-known, true-to-life fifth gospel known as the Diatessaron—reveal about the Church’s most controversial holy relic. But just as he begins to understand the truth about his friend’s death and its consequences for the future of the world’s two largest Christian Churches, Father Alex finds himself hunted down by someone with a vested stake in the exhibit—someone he must outwit to survive.

Some of the interesting things for me ...

The Diatessaron comes into play, found in the Vatican library ...



The Diatessaron is ... the most prominent early Gospel harmony; and was created by Tatian, an early Christian Assyrian apologist and ascetic. Tatian sought to combine all the textual material he found in the four gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—into a single coherent narrative of Jesus's life and death.

Some of the characters stay at he Domus Sanctæ Marthæ, the 'Vatican hotel' where Pope Francis now lives ...



And they visit Mater Ecclesiae , the tiny monastery on the Vatican Hill where B16 now lives ...



They also get a chance to visit the gardens at Castel Gandolfo ...



And one of the characters is a Swiss Guard ...



It's almost like visiting Vatican City :)