Panacea

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Panacea by F. Paul Wilson



This is one of those books that I liked way more than I can justify.

The book started out by annoying me, but, eventually, I got hooked on the characters. I was annoyed because this book was far too reminiscent of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, which I loathed. F. Paul Wilson even makes Catholics the villains in Panacea and warm nature pagans the good guys. Wilson turns the story into an improbable cipher quest where our heroes collect little clues that they decipher to hopscotch around the world. Finally, the bulk of the story's development is done through an “info-dump” around 75% of the way into the story, which was a good thing because ferreting out the information would have added another 500 pages to the book.

The story involves a “cure-all” potion - a panacea - that has been handed out by altruistic loners. A Catholic religious order - the 536 Brotherhood - is looking to exterminate the pagan movement that they know is responsible for this altruistic guerrilla medical care because they believe that it is contrary to God's plan that people should suffer, although why they haven't blown up all aspirin factories in the world is unclear. The brotherhood has infiltrated the CIA and so has all the resources of a vast and unsympathetic intelligence agency. The brother leading the charge is a narrow-minded, pharisaical Catholic named Nelson Fife. Medical Examiner Laura Fanning comes under his scrutiny when she begins to realize that two burned bodies are (a) unnaturally healthy and (b) share the same tatoo. It turns out that Nelson has a personal score to settle with Laura, but before he can she is “fairy godmothered” by Rick Haydon who is working for billionaire Clayton Stahlman, who is dying and wants just one dose of the magic potion.

That pretty much puts all the pieces on the board. From there it is a cat and mouse game as Haydon and Fanning find clues that take them from Mexico to Israel to France to the North Atlantic where they continuously run into elements of 536.

It was actually a fun story. I enjoyed Haydon immensely. He is uber-competent, drops pronouns, has a facility with zip ties, and has a keen suspicion that reality may be a con-job. Fanning began to grow on me as “Scully” to Haydon's “Mulder.” Her initial default setting in dealing with Haydon is “annoyed”, which was annoying, but that begins to wear away in light of his obvious competence.

It's not that there aren't problems with this story as a matter of workmanship. I've pointed out some of them, and there seem to be plot holes that you could throw a CIA agent whose body has been zip-tied to a tree branch through. But after I'd forgiven Wilson's anti-Catholic villains on the ground that they really weren't Catholics so much as a strange sect that mutated from Catholicism a millenium ago, and the unhistoric paganism that migrated from Scotland to Spain and back again, it was just a rollicking good yarn.

I also liked the buried lede that the world is an occult place unknown to us civilians. This should form the basis for the sequels.

So, if you are looking for entertainment value, check this out. If you have a low tolerance for Dan Brown, give it a miss.