'The Expected One'  by Kathleen McGowan
Published bySimon & Schuster.  ISBN 0-7432-9532-3

Readers are used to subdivisions in classifying crime novels e.g. historical, procedural.   With The Expected One a new subdivision of theological detection could be added.  Kathleen McGowan has spent twenty years researching the Gospel of Mary Magdalene for her books and has come up with a version that uses religion, folklore and occult societies.  Her attitude to history,  put into the mouth of her heroine, Maureen Pascal, is original and starts from the belief that "History is not what happened.  History is what was written down."  Since accepted history in the past has been written by men, about men and with a male interpretation of the role of women,  McGowan found herself researching and rewriting the story of famous women who have been "maligned and misunderstood" and she quotes Marie Antoinette,  Lucrezia Borgia and Boudicca.  This led her to investigate the story of Mary Magdalene, who has the unsupported reputation in Christian society of being a prostitute.

Now to the book.  When the American  journalist, Maureen Pascal starts her research for a book on a new look at the life of Mary Magdalene she is investigating a very ancient and complex mystery.  She does not know, until the book gradually reveals it, that she is in the bloodline that holds the key to the secret hiding place of a set of sacred scrolls, written by Mary Magdelene telling the life of Jesus in the New Testament,  the only version of these events as experienced by a woman.  So, as Maureen travels from Jerusalem to Paris to Southern France she is subjected to various dream sequences and visionary experiences which indicate that she has a special part to play in the discovery of the scrolls;  that she is in fact the Expected One, the special seeker who will reveal the hidden treasure i.e. the scrolls.  Unravelling the clues to the mystery involve looking afresh at the work of famous artists and scientists.

The last third of the book is taken up with  the translation of the discovered scrolls and gives a different version of  New Testament events that is "deeply moving and powerful".  It is, of course, the only record of the life, death and resurrection of Christ as it might have been experienced by a woman.  Altogether I  found it hard to define this novel.  There are villains, violent crimes and murders in it but these do not  seem to be the intention of the story and solving them has little importance.  The reader may need a sympathetic response to Christianity in order to enjoy reading this book and the books that the title page suggests are going to follow by the sub-title, "Book One of the Magdelene Line".

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Rosemary Brown