The book quickly travels to New York City into the hands of Nick Robinson who knows a person who will be very interested in this discovery. He calls on architect Joseph Koster who most recently had been searching for the Gospel of Thomas.  Koster in turn knows an engineer in San Francisco, Savita Sajan, who will be able to translate the text and unlock the secrets to this long lost gospel. 

The text turns out to be a treasure map of sorts, with clues leading to the pieces of the gospel which claim that Jesus instructed Judas to betray Him so that prophecy would be fulfilled and that Judas did not commit suicide out of guilt, but rather was murdered as part of a cover up. Koster feels this would rock Church doctrine to its very core. In the meantime, Tom is feeling guilty for several transgressions and receives the sacrament of Reconciliation in Philadelphia.  Here he confesses that he thinks he may be complicit in the theft of Benjamin Franklin’s journal, but his confessor is too busy thinking about how he can use his newly gained knowledge of the journal to further his career and agenda. 

As Koster and Sajan begin to unravel the clues in the text, the two soon realize that they may not be searching for the Gospel of Judas, but something that may put them in much more danger than they could have ever realized.  

The God Machine is filled with shallow characters, from Tom Moody (who may just be dumb, not shallow) to Father O’Toole who is willing to betray the sanctity of the confessional to ensure that his Youth Gang proposal is accepted, to archbishops in Rome, and people to willing to accept the authenticity of the journal and what it contains as if they always knew such a thing existed.

During the introduction of Father O’Toole, every recent headline relating to the Catholic Church is brought up, the sex scandal, the death of the Pope, the possibility of electing a Pope from a third world country, even the local grand jury investigation of the real Archbishop of Philadelphia, Anthony Bevilacqua. The story goes back to Ben Franklin’s life once in a while, but not always smoothly.  Awkward writing, (or editing) interrupts the flow of the narrative.  There is a lot of action and intrigue in the plot and readers who read quickly and gloss over the details of character and editing will find a lot of fast-paced, movie-like scenes and will be surprised when they learn what is really at stake.                                  

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry