The Apocalypse Door

by James D. Macdonald

Overview

Welcome to the world of Peter Crossman, Knight Templar Extraordinare. He's a man with a mission…and his boss is literally out of this world.

Despite what is known as gospel truth, the order of the Knight Templars never really went out of business. These warriors of God still walk among us, battling evil to keep Adam's children safe…as they have been doing for millennia.

Peter Crossman is a priest and a man of many talents, performing last rites with one hand and handling a flamethrower in the other. He walks with faith at his side and with his colleague, the dangerously sexy Sister Mary Magdalene of the Special Action Executive Branch of the Poor Clares. Peter is faced with a crisis of biblical proportions when a search for some missing UN peacekeepers goes horribly wrong. A very unholy object is found and may open a portal to damnation.

Fortunately, demonic magic isn't the only source of Power in the world. And Peter's got a direct line to the biggest guns in the universe.

Smart, funny, and sexy, The Apocalypse Door is a rollicking caper with a touch of the sacred.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780765306081
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/08/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

The Apocalypse Door is the first in the Peter Crossman series. J. D. MacDonald is a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award winner who, with his wife Debra Doyle, has penned the much acclaimed Mageworlds series. He resides in New Hampshire.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from The Apocalypse Door:

The Blue Dolphin was a waterfront dive on the Hudson side of Manhattan. The lights were low, the vinyl on the seats was cracked, and the air was thick with the odors of sweat, cigarettes, and sin. I’d reported in by phone to the local chapter as soon as I was clear of Newark. The phone call had been four hours ago and every bone in my body kept screaming, “The OP is Blown, Get Out,” but there are times when you have to ignore screaming bones. I mentally gave my contact fifteen more minutes and turned my attention back to observing the degradation of my fellow man.

I half-heard, half-felt someone approaching on my right. I still had my attention split three ways between what I hoped was a waitress, the stage, and the door—mostly the door—when she came up and bent over to murmur a few words in my ear. Her breath was warm, her lips moving close beside my ear. She was all but nibbling my earlobe.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two days since my last confession.”

My cover was blown. She knew what I was, even if she didn’t exactly know who. And she knew exactly how to get to me. I couldn’t refuse her the sacrament, not without risking my own damnation. I had no choice but to ask her, “What is your confession, my daughter?”

“I’ve come here to kill you.”

Copyright J.D. Macdonald

Editorial Reviews

A dash of medieval mystery adds zest to this inventive m lange of hard-boiled thriller and speculative fantasy. The refreshingly original hero, Peter Crossman, is an Inner Temple soldier in the Knights Templar, an order of paramilitary priests that has existed covertly since its presumed dismantling in the 14th century. Although he's used to challenging missions, Peter's latest proves a doozy when a tip on the whereabouts of a missing U.N. peacekeeping team leads him to a warehouse in Newark and a crate of living mushrooms that appear to flinch at the sign of the cross. Peter and his partner Simon later stumble on the gruesomely mutilated bodies of their confederates and wind up in the hands of the Teutonic Knights, a heretical rival sect whose figurehead, a brazen talking effigy, is the otherworldly key to past and present intrigues that have bedeviled Peter and his order. The jolts and torques of the roller-coaster plot are completely unpredictable, but Macdonald sets them up credibly, with subtly deployed clues and skillful misdirection of the reader to supernatural explanations for crucial plot developments. The Knights Templar angle also gives events an interesting moral dimension and a distinctive focus for the development of Peter's character through the unique obligations it creates (such as having to give absolution to an assassin preparing to kill him in an early scene). Though other novels have blended mysticism, mystery and fantasy, few have done it as smartly or succinctly as this one. (Nov. 15) FYI: Macdonald is the coauthor of Mageworlds and other novels with his wife, Debra Doyle, under the pseudonym J.D. Macdonald. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

When a UN peacekeeping force goes missing, agent Peter Crossman, a modern-day Knight Templar, must find it. Joined by Simon, his apprentice, and Maggie, a professional assassin and a member of the Order of Poor Claires, Crossman uncovers information leading to a diabolical scheme to open a gate to hell. The author, who co-writes the "Mageworlds" series with wife Debra Doyle, applies his bare-bones style to a fast-paced tale of supernatural intrigue featuring hard-as-nails heroes on a literal mission from God. A good choice for most libraries. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Breezy spy spoof as members of the medieval Knights Templar have survived to modern times and find themselves in a complicated intrigue with their rivals, the Teutonic Knights, as well as with the CIA, the UN, what might be a Soviet matter-transmitter, a purloined cultic idol and a suave Manhattan Satanist who has been "excommunicated for giving evil a bad name." As one of the 33 priests of the Knights Templar's inner circle, Peter Crossman (man of the cross, get it?) can take confession, administer last rites, speak Latin, and do every James Bond stunt except sleep with Maggie, his beautiful partner in virtue, who happens to be a nun and trained assassin. Together with Simon, a Templar trainee uncomfortably proficient at safecracking, they're assigned to break into a warehouse in Newark, New Jersey, and search for a bunch of UN peacekeepers who've been kidnapped from Jerusalem. They find a barrel of fungus so vile it sets Maggie's rosary on fire. A Templar agent who's supposed to explain everything winds up dead behind a Manhattan strip-club, his face sliced off. After consulting the defrocked Satanist and part-time art thief, Francis X. Dalyrmple, the trio goes back and forth across the Hudson, pursued by Teutonic Knight bad guys, CIA double agents, and a horde of stinking fungoid zombies as they locate the Baphomet, a telepathic, matter-transporting idol that might be fulfilling the prophecies presaging the apocalypse. Macdonald, co-author (with his wife, Debra Doyle) of the Mageworlds fantasy series, sweetens his farce with puns, comic asides, references to The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and, in a parallel narrative of Crossman's earlier life as a CIA agent, wonderfully bad Hemingway ("Youare such a woman and I am such a man"). Cloak-and-dagger meets robe-and-Psalter with jokes and swagger, all just for fun.

Kirkus Reviews