Author: Andrew Warren
Publisher: Tate Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-62295-187-1

“And I believe Rabbi Rifkin succeeded where others failed was because he realized that the locations described in the Copper Scroll were mere tactical fabrications intended to deceive the Romans as to the actual whereabouts of the Temple treasure,” Max explains in Andrew Warren’s novel, The Countershaded Ibex.

At four hundred and three pages, this paperback book has a photograph of the Judean animal that blends in with the barren landscape super-imposed over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and a scroll. With minor profanity and scenes of bombings, torture, and murder, the book is targeted toward mature adults, especially those interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll or the State of Israel in current times.

Fifty-seven year old Max Gilbert is a secular Jew who is an American professor of Middle Eastern studies with occasional panic attacks. When a mysterious caller interrupts his sleep in the middle of the night, he is intrigued by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect in the Israeli desert that wants to eliminate any Jew who interferes with the timing of the coming Messiah.

Tracking rumors that the famous Copper Scroll unearthed in the nineteen sixties is a map of sixty-four locations of amassed hidden treasures that could be used for strategic military stealth weapons, Max has to play cat and mouse with both the Palestinian Hamas and Israeli Mossad along with a security detail group from the Vatican.

With the help of twenty-nine year old radical Haredi Jew defector, Avram, and Doctor Rebecca Logan, a Catholic sister who questions her churchly vows, they try to unravel the past fifty years regarding the scroll’s history and location.

From New York to Israel, London, and Rome, the chase is on if Max can not only find out where vast treasures are hidden, he must stay one step ahead of his pursuers and stay alive as he learns more about his countershaded ibex theory.

With the first hundred pages being tedious history and background information on Israel, her land and her wars, the tome picks up as Max follows the trail involving the Sons of Zadok, the Camerlengo of the Holy See, and Hezekiah’s Tunnel. The undertone of the story tell of Max and his son’s dalliances as the father questions his romantic intentions toward Rebecca.

Although a historical fiction tale, Warren offers one more suggestive concept regarding the Copper Scroll and how more than one religion or group of people want to control its knowledge and contents.

This book was furnished by Darcie Rowan PR in lieu of an unbiased review.

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