The Mystery of Iniquity

by Daniel Taylor

Overview

In this fourth and final entry in the Jon Mote Mysteries, our accidental sleuth and his sister Judy find themselves entangled in an international web of evil done and evil revenged. The often confused but always curious Jon finds himself the father of triplets and, for reasons not always clear even to himself, back in church. Judy, a woman with mental challenges but a heart as wide as the horizon, is now living with Jon and wife Zillah, helping them raise “our children.”

New to church, but somehow appointed to the Missions Committee (soon renamed the Care and Compassion Committee), Jon is asked to be the liaison with an immigrant family from Iraq the church wishes to aid. No one realizes that offering such help puts everyone in jeopardy, as evil done afar comes near to roost.

The cast of characters from past novels in the series reappears, including the band of residents from Judy’s group home and the iron-willed theologian Sister Brigit. All are involved in this dramatic investigation into the nature of evil in the human experience and all contribute to Jon’s stumbling but dogged pilgrimage toward greater wholeness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639821259
Publisher:	Slant Books
Publication date:	12/05/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	396 KB

About the Author

Daniel Taylor is the author of thirteen books, including The Myth of Certainty, Letters to My Children, Tell Me a Story, Creating a Spiritual Legacy, and The Skeptical Believer. His debut novel, Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, won the Christianity Today 2016 Book Award for fiction. With the publication of The Mystery of Iniquity, his four-book series of Jon Mote mystery comes to a conclusion.

Daniel Taylor is the author of thirteen books, including The Myth of Certainty, Letters to My Children, Tell Me a Story, Creating a Spiritual Legacy, and The Skeptical Believer. His debut novel, Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, won the Christianity Today 2016 Book Award for fiction. With the publication of The Mystery of Iniquity, his four-book series of Jon Mote mystery comes to a conclusion

Read an Excerpt

Abandon [GW1] all hope, ye who enter here.

—Dante, Inferno

 

 

Darkness. Eyes adjust slowly, but ears hear what no one wants ever to hear—muffled screams, groans, the thudding of metal pipes sounding dully against flesh. The narrow corridor is long, dimming into black. Cold cement walls coated with wet—likely seeping water, but your mind insists it is blood. Someone behind you has a fistful of your hair and is pushing you forward, forcing your chin to your chest. You want to say you are innocent, but no one, by definition, is innocent in this mausoleum of all hope. All are guilty. All will suffer.

You pass doors of small cells off the corridor on both sides. Each one is occupied. In each one a body in being rendered. You try not to imagine what awaits in your own cell, a room set aside for you, just for you, its only guest. Just as well. In this place, imagination is a beggar.

Your guide, a sinister Virgil, pauses in front of a door. You think to break away and run, a sign of your witless desperation. Run where? Deeper into hell?

The escort kicks the door open and shoves you in, letting go of your hair. A single, bare bulb hangs by a wire on the ceiling. Other wires, their metal ends exposed, dangle from the walls. A powerful-looking man, in every way, greets you with a smile.

“Welcome.”

He holds a filleting knife, blade a sliver of silver, spinning it nonchalantly in his hand.

He asks you no questions. He is not interested in a confession. Or information. He is interested only in your fear—and in making you pay. You do not know for what.

An evil place. A place of evil.

But not the only one.

 [GW1][NB: my preference is that this opening not be assigned a chapter number]

Editorial Reviews

A lot of misinformation is circulating about Christianity and "the American novel," especially the American novel right now. If you want to dispel some of that fog while repeatedly experiencing the shock of recognition, the ideal place to start is Daniel Taylor's just-concluded four-book sequence centering on Jon Mote (a distant relation of Hazel Motes, perhaps) and his developmentally disabled sister, Judy, one of the most memorable characters I've encountered in a lifetime of reading fiction. Start at the beginning of the series and read all the way through, or start with The Mystery of Iniquity (a mystery in which we all figure) and, if you are beguiled, go back to the beginning.

--John Wilson, Senior Editor, Marginalia Review of Books

From the Publisher