Salvation Boulevard
Salvation Boulevard is a page-turning thriller in the tradition of John Grisham and Richard Condon that grapples with the ecstatic and entropic nature of religious faith in contemporary America.
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| Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Nation Books September 8, 2008 ISBN-10: 1568584113 ISBN-13: 978-1568584119 |
Some cases test a private investigator’s wits, others test his courage, and still others, his character. In Salvation Boulevard, P.I. Carl Van Wagener has found a case that tests them all, and then goes on to test his soul. A professor is dead and a suspect—who has confessed—is in custody. But nothing is what it seems. After all, the dead man is an atheist professor, the accused an Islamic foreign student, the defense attorney a Jew, and the detective a Born Again Christian. As Carl gets deeper and deeper into the investigation of the death of professor Nathaniel MacLeod, his most basic beliefs and relationships are tried and his world is turned upside down. The mega-church, the pastor, and his new wife who have redeemed Carl from a life of grim debauchery insist on his dropping the case. But he can’t stop searching for the real killer and the truth—no matter what the personal cost. |
Larry Beinhart’s Salvation Boulevard pulls off one of the toughest tricks in modern literature: a sharp, high-energy whodunit that will disturb you with how closely it is based on real life.
Meet Carl the detective, a “Christian working for a Jewish lawyer who’s working for an Islamic kid to find out who really killed the atheist” college professor.
Along the way he confronts a tangled thicket of troubling questions about war, religion, terrorist cells, the Rapture, the ACLU, a Mexican drug cartel, university endowment funds, enhanced interrogation techniques and whether it is a good idea to expect the worst in people so you won’t be disappointed.
Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize winning Chicago Tribune columnist
I have read your Salvation Boulevard with great interest; could not put it down. It is a super piece of work on many levels: a tale of suspense and intrigue an exploration of character in a world gone mad a taxonomy of temptation, especially the lust for power a wrenching apocalypse of the distortions of faith. And it all works! Remarkable tour de force.
Fr. Stephen Chinlund, Episcopal minister
“Larry Beinhart's Salvation Boulevard is the kind of pop-fiction detective story that could fundamentally transform the consciousness of Red-state America. And it's a fun and often quite provocative read for the rest of us! I couldn't put it down!”
Rabbi Michael Lerner Tikkun