A confession that could destroy the very foundations of the church…

In the private chambers of the pope himself, the body of a young Benedictine monk is found dead.

Even more shocking, it’s clear the young monk took his own life, by shooting himself in the head.

Cardinal Giona Tellaro, president of the Vatican’s Central Security Office, is tasked to find out why.

Ambitious, and a Sicilian with links to the “Honourable Society”, Tellaro has little interest in the mystery of a lowly and evidently suicidal monk.

But his curiosity is piqued when the monk’s superior dies – a heart attack sometime before the monk’s suicide from some sort of shock.

The pair were archivists, working in the Vatican’s vast archive.

As Tellaro deduces, their latest restoration lead them to discover a scroll, the contents of which were so shocking it literally killed them…

And when Tellaro himself reads it, he realises that if true, the scroll could destroy the very foundations from which all of Christendom is built on.

If it’s fake then no matter.

And if it’s real, well, Tellaro can use it in the same way Rodrigo Borgia five centuries before used it – blackmail for power.

Far away from the Vatican and Rome, in New York City, David Kane is admitted to hospital.

Once, he was a rising star in the field of Palaeography, but after the brutal murder of his wife, Janine, Kane took to the bottle.

Homeless and without friend or family, David is resigned himself to his own death, until he’s kidnapped by the Mafia.

They ask him to verify and translate an old scroll in return for discretion, a free trip to Rome and twenty thousand dollars in cash.

It’s a win-win as far as David is concerned.

But as David ascertains, the scroll is a genuine text from the first century AD.

And as David realises, it also means his life is in terrible danger…

A tale of deception, love and murder, The Confession is a chilling thriller.

Praise for Peter MacAlan

‘Well researched and splendidly exciting. Peter MacAlan is a real find’ – Frederick Nolan, author of Brass Target

‘Nerve-racking entertainment. An engrossing thriller’ – Irish Times

A fascinating story, painstakingly researched, and gripping to the last’ Manchester Evening News

‘Charged with suspense’ -Evening News, Edinburgh

Peter MacAlan is one of the pseudonyms under which Peter Berresford Ellis has written. Ellis is a historian, literary biographer and novelist. Born in Coventry, Warwickshire, Ellis began his career as a junior reporter before becoming a full-time writer in 1975. He has published almost 100 books and is also the author over 100 short stories.