Dr. Ottavia Salina is a paleographer in the subterranean vaults of the Secret Archives in the Vatican. She is also a Nun and comes from a rather prominent family in Palermo. Because of her knowledge and interest in breaking languages down so that they may be translated and understood today, she is brought into a death investigation where the Ethiopian victim is entirely covered with symbols and cryptic markings. Dr. Salina is accompanied by a member of the Swiss Guard, a Captain who has been entrusted as a keeper of the most sensitive secrets of the Church from public scrutiny, and a Professor Boswell, who is a respected Egyptian Archaeologist and also very knowledgeable in Coptic Christian readings. The story takes on a life of its own when a Byzantine manuscript is smuggled out of a shrine and they start deciphering the words of the brotherhood of the Staurofilakes and its leaders, who were the Catos, or scribes, of the group.

The pace quickens because of the Vatican’s urgent need to find and stop the thieves of the relics of the Ligna Crucis. What starts as an investigation of a man dying and the box of wood chips found at his side, follows the steps in Dante’s Divine Comedy of the Seven Deadly Sins: Rome for pride, Ravenna for envy, Jerusalem for wrath, Athens for sloth, Constantinople for greed, Alexandria for gluttony and Antioch for lust... and to find out how all of them are breaking down the Church. The trio must undergo tests at each antiquity and city that they encounter to prove they are worthy of being admitted to the brotherhood and the final place of earthly paradise to live out their lives.

The Last Cato is a book I highly recommend because it gives the reader something to think about. It raises questions about some of the values of the Church, not by breaking the belief system, but by opening the senses to other realities. There will be comparisons to The DaVinci Code, but this book was written before Dan Brown started that one. He had already opened the door with Angels & Demons, but Ms. Asensi opened this door all by herself, and she did a wonderful job of writing a very captivating story. Many myths and societies have surrounded the Church through time that provide fruitful picking if you have enough of a background to write stories, until either the Church relates the truth to let us know the realities, or we see the truth written on the pages and start to relate to them more than to the lies we have chosen to live by. Read this book, especially if you have unanswered questions about the Vatican and the Church.