A Killing for Christ, 50th Anniversar..., Pete Hamill
A Killing for Christ, 50th Anniversar..., Pete Hamill
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A Killing for Christ, 50th Anniversary Edition

Author: Pete Hamill

Narrator: Keith Szarabajka

Unabridged: 7 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/06/2018

Synopsis

Rome. Holy Thursday. A limousine carrying two pilgrims speeds toward the city. Rail, an American publisher, an obese voluptuary, perspires in the heat and shivers with the icy premonition of death. His companion, Harwell, is running a cold fever of bigotry and violence, self-indulgence and sadism: he is an American Nazi. The two must separate soon, must not be seen together, for they are to be the instruments of a public murder.Rail meets Father Malloy, who is to show him around the city. Malloy had been a chaplain in Vietnam, and he had seen too many people die. He is not aware of the murder Rail carries with him. This is to be a murder of world-shaking consequence. It is a plot on a grand scale, conceived by men of secret power: a sin-crazed, aging cardinal and a powerful Italian count. For them, Rail and Harwell are only acolytes in a monstrous ceremony; Malloy, awash in doubts about himself and his religious faith, is drawn into the drama.In A Killing for Christ, Pete Hamill steps behind the public face of the modern Church and sees the dark grottoes within. He examines the hidden hearts of priests and prostitutes, the tortured windings of perverted thinking, the orgies of the bored and the bitter. Within the passage of the four days most holy to the Church, he traces the malignant progress of a blasphemous conspiracy to the taut moment of its ultimate act and redeems from it a unique understanding of man and of faith.

About Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill was born in Brooklyn in 1935 and is, for many, the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and New York magazine, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many bestselling books, including the novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He recently moved back to Brooklyn.

About Keith Szarabajka

Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on November 04, 2019

50th Anniversary of Peter Hamill's debut 1968 novel about a disillusioned Vatican priest who thwarts an assassination plot against the Pope. The characters and the revolutionary atmosphere of 1968 are well developed but the finale climax of the plot feels rushed and incomplete. Still, not a bad read......more

Goodreads review by Peg on March 28, 2018

Thanks to the publisher, Akashic Books, via LibraryThing, for an early review copy in exchange for my honest opinion. This is the 50th Anniversary Edition of Mr. Hamill's debut novel and has a new author introduction. Since I had never read anything by him, I was anxious to see what kind of a writer......more

Goodreads review by Jeff on March 05, 2018

I want to thank the Goodreads giveaway program and Akashic Books for the opportunity to read this novel. With a Killing for Christ, we have a Priest who has lost faith in his religion and himself. We also have a crazed assassin, as well as a few other characters coming in and out of the story, which......more

Goodreads review by Daniel on July 13, 2023

This is Hamil’s first novel. I have read his other books before. You can see his emerging style on the book such as his amazing back story that he provides for his characters. In his later books he does this exquisitely as he weaves them into the story. In this book it is uneven but still compelling......more

Goodreads review by Amy on November 16, 2021

I believe this was Mr. Hamill's first novel and I must say it was harsh and riveting. A plot to assassinate the Pope on Easter is the premise. The characters are all troubled souls, Fr. Molloy and his lady, Franca, friend Frank, and a whole cast of others involved in this suspense.......more

Quotes

“Hamill is better known as one of our greatest chroniclers of New York City. In this, his first novel, rereleased on its fiftieth anniversary, he goes all hard-boiled noir, telling the story of a disaffected American priest and a plot to kill the pope.” New York Times Book Review

“A fast-paced, topical thriller…Hamill’s prose is stylishly punchy.” New York Times

“The style and substance of this first novel owes much to hardboiled, gutsy, private-eye fiction and to a general submersion into obscenity and violence.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • New York Times Pick
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