The Magdalene Cipher

The reliquary of Saint Mary Magdalene has been empty for four months. The Church has known and said nothing - which is what the Church does with things it doesn't know how to manage.

Nick Holt doesn't know what was inside it. But he knows who took it. And he knows, because the man who engineered his last investigation has resurfaced to tell him, that what was inside it is currently in a limestone cave in Provence with a woman who authenticated it thirty-seven years ago, was told to stay quiet, and has spent the decades since making sure she'd never be told that again.

The manuscript she found describes a burial. A codex. A first-person account of events that, if the letter is genuine, would mean the Church has been sitting on the most important document in Christian history since at least 1987.

Holt takes the case - not for the Vatican, not for the man who asked him, but for the reason he takes everything: because the thread is there and he can follow it. He'll move through Paris, Provence, and Jerusalem, work with people he doesn't fully trust, against people he half-admires, and arrive at an answer he can't fully act on yet.

The Magdalene Cipher is the second novel in the Vatican Operations series. It ends where the best thrillers always end: one door closed, another open, and Holt already walking toward it.