The God Virus: The Last Evolution

A novel by Margaret Bruce and Steve Yergovich

John Bouchard, ex-Marine sniper turned reluctant professor of comparative religions, is recruited by the Vatican for a research project. He soon discovers they want more of the former Marine than the Notre Dame professor. What he finds ties him to a geneticist, an archaeologist, a veterinarian, a bishop, and a world-class hacker. Together, what they discover is the thing that enabled modern civilization and what may cause its downfall.

The God Virus: The Last Evolution

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THE GOD VIRUS

THE LAST EVOLUTION

by Margaret Bruce & Steve Yergovich ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2024

An international cast leads this tense story of murder and subterfuge.

In Bruce and Yergovich’s thriller, a university professor and former Marine finds himself entangled in a conspiracy that has ties to the Vatican.

Former sniper John Bouchard is now a Notre Dame professor teaching comparative religion. Unexpectedly, Cardinal Albani at the Vatican offers him a job as research assistant to one Bishop Beneventi. John’s real purpose is to spy on the bishop, whose secret internet service (separate from the Vatican’s) has the cardinal worried about potential “indiscretions.” Once in Rome, John spots the bishop with a suspicious priest whose mannerisms suggest Marine training; that’s just the start of the situation’s peculiarities. John discovers that he’s got a lot in common with the people he’s meeting for the first time, from a geneticist who runs a San Francisco research lab to a hacker with Asperger’s to an East African archaeologist: they all seem to be targets for assassination. Who is trying to kill them, and why, are questions John and the others must work out, but chances are the answers are connected to the Vatican. Bruce and Yergovich’s novel thrives on suspense. Readers get an assassin’s recurring narrative perspective in cold, unsettling scenes, but, for the most part, the story is left deliberately vague. For example, John’s group also involves a veterinarian who asks the former Marine to help “validate” his hypothesis (regarding a dog that apparently senses illness) but won’t tell John what that hypothesis is. (Clarification doesn’t come until much later in an exposition dump.) The narrative addresses genuinely intriguing theological topics, as when John confronts Cardinal Albani: “‘This religion,’ John waved an arm around to indicate the Catholic church, ‘has been used as a weapon of subjugation, and yet it claims to be the path of peace. I can no longer abide the contradictions and the hypocrisy, nor am I willing to tie myself in intellectual knots to make sense of it all.’” The denouement wraps up everything with panache.

An international cast leads this tense story of murder and subterfuge.

— Kirkus Reviews