The Last Cato

The Last Cato
Matilde Aseni
Rayo/Harper Collins Publishers
ISBN: 0060828579
Fiction, Historical Novel
Reviewed by Nancy Flinn Ludwin

The Last Cato takes the reader on a thrilling trip around the world to well traveled cities and hidden places in search a 2000 year old mystery, the location of the Holy Cross from Christ’s crucifixion.
The main character, Sister Ottavia Salina is an Italian nun working in a secret Vatican archive classifying sacred writings and relics from early Christianity. Undercover, she is assigned to study the murder of an Ethiopian man found with strange splinters of wood near his body. On her team is an Egyptian archeologist, Professor Farag Boswell and the team’s leader, Captain Kaspar Glauser-Roist, a member of the elitist Vatican Swiss Guard and keeper of the Church’s secrets on people and politics. Together they must find out why pieces of the Holy Cross stored in religious sites all over the world have been disappearing and how this murder is connected to it.
The team discovers that cryptic crosses tattooed on the dead man are based on the Seven Deadly Sins found in Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Tracing Dante’s steps the team goes on a riveting search for the key holder to the ancient puzzle, a mysterious scribe called a Cato, from a centuries old secret society formed to protect the Holy Cross and rumored to currently exist. The team exhaustingly travels to seven cities, each representing one of the Seven Deadly Sins for clues to the disappearance of the cross relics. Risking death and sacrificial mutilation, Ottavia finds herself emotionally and physically connected to Professor Boswell. All brilliant in their fields of Biblical knowledge and ancient languages, they must decipher codes and riddles against time to save themselves and unravel the truth. Exhausted Ottavia must test the faith in herself, her family and the church unsure if she will survive unscathed or be forever haunted by her choices.
This story is exhilarating until the very end with its heart pounding plot. Written from Ottavia’s intellectual viewpoint in the first person narrative, I preferred it over The Da Vinci Code. The extensive biblical, classical, and world history made it a learning experience as well fascinating book. Five stars!