The Assignment - Softcover

Olsen, Mark Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 076422817X ISBN 13: 9780764228179

Publisher: Bethany House, 2004

Synopsis

With the action and suspense of a Ted Dekker novel and the spiritual warfare of This Present Darkness, Olsen’s first solo novel poses an intriguing question. What if the Restrainer of II Thessalonians, the Holy Spirit who “holds back the lawless man until God takes him away,” indwells a man who has lived under various identities since the time of Christ, always moving on when his “agelessness” is discovered? An immortal man, but still just a man, ¼awed and discouraged over his inability to better succeed at his immense mission: to restrain evil in the world. And what if at a time when the world hangs on the precipice of a third world war, this man were given one final opportunity to do battle with the Evil One?

About this title

About the Author

Mark Andrew Olsen is a talented screenwriter and the co-writer of Tommy Tenney’s debut novel, Hadassah: One Night with the King. Olsen has worked as a speech and promotional writer since his college days at Baylor University. He and his family make their home in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

From Publishers Weekly

Troubles plague this jumbled suspense novel for the CBA market by Olsen, a screenwriter who collaborated with Tommy Tenney on the novel Hadassah. Deep below the ground, sealed alive in a tomb for 60 years, is a "man" who is 1,734 years old and whose mission is to battle demonic forces on behalf of the Christian faith. Searching for him is Father Thierry, a 95-year-old priest who is part of the Order of St. Lazare, a secret sect that the Vatican has tried to disband. "The destroyer," Satan's evil spirit of destruction, war and bloodshed, is at work to prevent them from reaching their goal. He's already wreaked havoc over the course of history, as detailed in the novel in a tiresome litany of human atrocities. Complicating things is tension between Jews and Catholics over the priest's perceived desecration of a Holocaust site. Olsen peppers his tale with bang-bang action, supernatural warfare and Christian history, but too many points of view confuse the reader and make the pacing fitful. There's no shortage of kidnappings, quicksand, gunfights, secret membership amulets, harrowing escapes, rape, murder and terrorists as the plot unfolds. Numerous italicized journal entries, letters and flashbacks make for challenging reading. There's also an obvious nod to the The Da Vinci Code in the idea of a secret Catholic sect. Olsen writes some good scenes and knows how to raise the occasional goose bump, but readers will have trouble sticking with his story.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Bethany House
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 076422817X
• ISBN 13: 9780764228179
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 464