Vatican Mystery Fiction

When the papal apartments are burgled in 1901, Sherlock Holmes is summoned to Rome by Pope Leo XII. After learning from the pontiff that several priceless cameos that could prove compromising to the church, and perhaps determine the future of the newly unified Italy, have been stolen, Holmes is asked to recover them. In a parallel story, Michelangelo, the toast of Rome in 1501 after the unveiling of his Pieta, is commissioned by Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgia pontiffs, with creating the cameos that will bedevil Holmes and the papacy four centuries later.

Father Michael Dominic, prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives in Rome, is entrusted with the mission of transporting the original 17th century trial documents of Galileo to Loyola Law School in Chicago. The stage is set for a modern historical mock trial of Galileo’s original heresy charges, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the legendary event.

In Munich, writer Benjamin Stern enters his flat to find a man leafing through his research. When Stern confronts him, the man shoots him, murmurs a few words in Latin, gathers the papers and leaves. In Venice, art restorer and Israeli agent Gabriel Allon reads a message saying that Stern is dead; can he leave immediately? At the Vatican, a priest named Pietro paces in the garden, pondering the discoveries he has made, the enemies he will make, and the journey he must undertake. Silva weaves these three threads into a multilayered mystery.

In "Vatican Files," Alicia Yoder's journey takes an unexpected turn when she makes a solemn vow to help find a missing priest—a relative of a dear friend—only to discover that he vanished within the sacred walls of Vatican City itself. As Alicia embarks on a quest to retrace the footsteps of the enigmatic clergyman, she stumbles upon a centuries-old conspiracy, a sinister plot that threatens to unravel the very foundations of the modern world.

It is an ordinary day in Marco Venetti’s quiet coastal parish - but the woman who’s come to confess is not ordinary. Marco has always been drawn to beautiful Elena, and she brings news that will shatter his peace. Elena’s sister and daughter have been kidnapped, to force her to bring a gang of ruthless men into the country - if she doesn’t, her family will be brutally killed. But if she obeys, many more innocents will die.... In her desperation she turns to Marco, knowing his time in the military has given him the skills she needs.

In her long career as America's most beloved suspense writer, Mary Higgins Clark's The Lost Years is her most astonishing and dramatic work to date. At its center is a discovery that, if authenticated, may be the most revered document in human history - the holiest of the holy - and certainly the most coveted and valuable object in the world.

Father Jonah Barlow is dead. The respected Jesuit scholar of apocalyptic studies might have died from a fall in his apartment...or was he pushed? All that is known for sure is that the provocative manuscript he was working on—a book that promised to reveal the upcoming fulfillment of ancient and recent prophecies, including the shocking Third Secret of Fatima—is missing. Two female detectives take on the investigation as a possible homicide, turning to Vatican archivist Father Michael Dominic for his help, since Barlow sent the young priest the only other copy of the manuscript.

Father Michael Dominic is called to France for an unusual assignment. A 14th-century bishop was found in a crypt buried under the burnt remnants of Notre-Dame—but he’s wearing the ring of a cardinal, and two parchment scrolls had been hidden in his garment sleeve. Who was this 700-year-old custodian of carefully guarded secrets?

September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war's outcome is far from certain. An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world's smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy. But Hauptmann's net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical.

In the days following the Pope's death, a cardinal is found brutally murdered in a chapel in Rome, his eyes gouged and his hands cut off. Called in for the grisly case, police inspector Paola Dicanti learns that another cardinal was recently found dead; he had also been tortured.

In Virginia, a Blacksite facility is assaulted with military sophistication to free a homegrown terrorist who once attempted to assassinate FBI Specialist Shari Cohen. Within days, two of America’s most iconic symbols of freedom are razed. In Rome, Kimball Hayden’s demons are at their worst, the man becoming a shell of his former self. But when he learns that Shari Cohen’s assassin is on the loose, he embarks on a trip of rediscovery that unites him with the woman he loves.

In a Galveston, Texas lab, a lethal strain has been stolen by a terrorist faction. In New Mexico, the population of a small town is completely wiped out. In Las Vegas, a vicious underground clan called the Community surfaces at night to prey on the weak. In Paris, two old foes of Kimball Hayden reunite as a kill team to hunt him down. Now considered dead by the Vatican, Kimball Hayden is leading a secretive life on the streets of Las Vegas. But when a parish comes under the threat of a vicious mob, he finds himself thrown back into a world of violence.

Before Kimball Hayden became a Vatican Knight, he was the commander of the Pieces of Eight, a kill squad that worked as part of a black-arm force of the CIA. He kills with impunity and acts with the cold fortitude of a machine. But when he begins to question the morality of his actions and the motives of his superiors, he is placed within the crosshairs by high-end principals who want to see him dead.

After a sacred tome written by the hand of Saint Peter is stolen from the Vatican’s Secret Archives, people around the world begin to die at the hands of a madman once the secrets of The Brimstone Diaries are unveiled. In Rome, a terrorist faction has quietly breached the ranks of the Vatican hierarchy. As the conspiracy within the ranks begin to materialize, the greatest threat to the Vatican State is about to commence with Vatican City caught dead-center within the crosshairs of total annihilation.

Kimball Hayden is the commander of an elite commando group known as the Vatican Knights, a black-op force that works for the Church to protect its sovereignty, its interests, and the welfare of its citizenry. But Kimball is being stalked by someone from the past, a soldier who is stronger, faster, and far more brutal - an assassin so deadly not even the Vatican Knights can stop him.

While traveling across the United States during the Papal Symposium, the papal plane, Shepherd One, is commandeered by a terrorist cell calling itself the Muslim Revolutionary Front. On board: a nuclear payload with half the yield that destroyed Hiroshima. Their demand to the US government: assassinate the five leading principals of Mossad.

In Washington, D.C., three priests have been murdered and mutilated with their corpses hanging upside-down in mock crucifixion. The only indicator as to the culprit is a 500-year-old order known as the Nocturnal Saints, an underground faction that had been borne from the Protestant Reformation and acts as judge, jury, and executioner against those deemed to be in contradiction of old-time traditions. So when Special Agent Shari Cohen of the FBI is called to track down this faceless enemy, she’s joined by the Vatican Knights, who have been dispatched by the pontiff to counteract the order.

In Geneva, a highly valued product with the power to cause major destruction is stolen from the CERN. Eighty kilometers from the Austrian border, a young girl becomes the key that controls the will of the man with the power to create and destroy. In the mountainous regions of Switzerland, a hostile force from a pariah regime attempts to extract a scientist from a fast-moving train.

In an abandoned church deep inside the Syrian Desert, Father Jenkins watches over a group of children who'd been orphaned by war and unrest. Having been marked for extraction by the Vatican Knights, a cabal of ruthless killers from the Islamic State cripples all attempts of safe passage and gives chase across a desert landscape that's completely ruled by scorpions and snakes.

In Los Angeles, the niece of an esteemed cardinal of the Vatican is abducted by the Albanian mob. Kimball Hayden, a man without a country or the support of the church, soon finds himself in the crosshairs of an indigenous black-op unit that is trying to terminate him for secrets that could set off a political firestorm. Lacking in numbers, Kimball must prove himself to the Vatican by overcoming an Albanian team of precision assassins and a sanctioned kill team from the United States government.