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The Mosaic Virus


by Carlos, T. Mock

List Price: $24.95
Available: Usually ships in 24 hours
Sales Rank: 1760692
Studio: Floricanto Press
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 268
Publication Date: October 05, 2006
Publisher: Floricanto Press


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
It is 1983. In Rome, Cardinal Siri, the most powerful Cardinal in the Vatican, summons a young Jesuit priest and assigns him a grave and urgent task. The Vatican has been keeping secret an epidemic of deaths among priests in the northeastern United States. Father Javier Barraza must determine how and why they are dying-and whether a suspected international conspiracy against the Holy Roman Church is coming to fruition. Barraza is an Argentinean who has risen swiftly through the ranks to the post of Devil's Advocate-an investigator of candidates for sainthood. In his new assignment, his path immediately intersects with Lillian Davis-Lodge, a special agent with the FBI, and a compelling figure from Barraza's past. The reappearance of Lillian is more than mere coincidence; she is far from the "special agent" she claims to be. She occupies the highest echelons of power in the United States, with full access to information and influence. Secrets and spies inhabit the subterranean world of the Church just as they do the government of the United States, and a disturbing trail of evidence strongly indicates to Barraza that his Church may be complicit in what he has been assigned to investigate. Set in the arcane, yet alluring world of the Vatican, The Mosaic Virus will grip you in its terrifyingly-true-to-life tale of secrets, sex and violence. At the end, you'll pray that it's only fiction. Carlos Mock's maiden voyage proves he is already a master storyteller. Laura S. Washington Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, DePaul University Columnist, Chicago Sun-Times A virus, man-made and swiftly lethal, has killed the priests, and a Cardinal in the United States is involved. As Barraza uncovers more about the role of his Church and the true origin of its laws about celibacy and its gay priests, he begins to fundamentally question his allegiance to Rome and to the doctrines of his faith. When he and Lillian find the creators of the virus, they find themselves in a desperate game of wits with faceless, mysterious, all-powerful institutions looking to protect their public image at all costs. Javier and Lillian are expendable, and even Lillian cannot protect them.


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 7 reviews)

Great Thriller  
Mosaic Virus
by Carlos T. Mock, M.D.
Floricanto Press, $[...], pap. ISBN-10: 0915745798, ISBN-13: 978-0915745791
Ken Furtato
Copyright by Echo Magazine - Phoenix
December 23, 2006.


If you like a thriller based on a conspiracy theory with global ramifications, put Carlos T. Mock's Mosaic Virus on your shopping list. Mock finds an ingenious way to connect the dots between real historical events and characters in a way that history (perhaps) never intended, coming up with a story both scary and plausible.

It's the early 1980s and priests in New York State are dying at an alarming rate, of a mysterious illness that kills quickly, yet baffles the medical community. The Vatican dispatches an investigator, "Father Doctor Javier Barraza the Jesuit" to determine if someone is killing priests and if there's a conspiracy afoot against the Church.

Two highly positioned Cardinals have competing agendas: one wants to learn the truth and one wants to hide it in order to protect the Church. Add a deadly FBI agent, Lillian Davis-Lodge -- a female James Bond who is poised to become the next FBI Director and who had an adolescent romance with Barraza. The Vatican invites her assistance, but the FBI has its own agenda in preventing Barraza from accomplishing his mission.

As for those dots, they begin with Pope Pius XII, the Nazi regime, and a young Jew being protected from the Nazis by one of the Cardinals. That youth will one day become New York's Cardinal Spellman, whose sexual dalliances with under-aged boys were the tip of the iceberg of the Church's pedophile-priest scandals. Popes Pius XII and John Paul I figure prominently in the plot, as do the Church's sex scandals, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, genocide, and even Gaëtan Dugas, once dubbed "patient zero" in the AIDS pandemic.

Mosaic Virus also hints at the shattering, sometimes crushing mystery and incomprehensibility of faith.

The Roman Catholic Church is a sacred cow that is always worthy of another skewer, and Mock delivers a potent one. In a world of wealth, power, secrecy and behind-the-scenes manipulation of global events, there's still no good-old-boys club like the Catholic Church.

Carlos Mock is a Chicago-based physician whose writing covers a broad spectrum of genres and topics. To learn more about him, visit his Web site at [...]

June 21, 2008

Nothing To Mock At  
A chillingly imagined story of the virus that became AIDS. Carlos T. Mock invites you into a seductive behind-the-scenes world at the Vatican, hinting at abuses of power and leaving no doubt the author knows what he's writing about. You begin to suspect he may have spent time there himself. He's certainly qualified to write about AIDS from the medical side. Whether this account of an international conspiracy that gave birth to AIDS is fictional or real-life, it makes a compelling story.
August 31, 2007

Kudos for "The Mosaic Virus"  
Carlos Mock has crafted an extraordinary tale of international intrigue in the Tom Clancy tradition. Through a dark labyrinth of government, religion and medical research gone mad, he threads the powerful love story of a Latino Catholic priest and a woman intelligence operative. And Mock keeps you guessing and gasping right to the last paragraph. This book should definitely be a movie.

-- Patricia Nell Warren is author of THE FRONT RUNNER and other bestsellers

March 10, 2007

Medical Thriller a new genre for author  
Unlike Mock's excellent, first, and much more personal book, Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual Odyssey, The Mosaic Virus is a well researched , tightly plotted, and fast paced medical-political thriller that wears its learning lightly and plausibly. Mock swiftly introduces us to a series of religious figures -- mostly at the Vatican -- in the 1970's. Among them are the power behind the throne Cardinal Siri, the more mysterious Cardinal Matta, and, just called to the Papal See -- a younger and far more innocent Argentine Priest whose main function so far has been to confirm or debunk candidates for sainthood. The novel takes on more serious complications with the unexplained deaths of younger Catholic priests in the U.S. Is the Soviet Union behind it, the C.I.A. or another secret organization trying to destabilize the Catholic Church? Young Father Javier's journey to enlightenment takes him around the world and into increasing peril, and not merely to his life either, but potentially to his spiritual health. What he stumbles into is a secret cabal involved in biological warfare with medical implications for his time with frightening results right up to our own era. While I missed the lovely, warm, autobiographical touches that made Mock's first book such a favorite, there's no question that this novel moves quickly and succinctly to it's surprising ending. Not all of the characters are equally well drawn -- several remain mere sketches. And a few of the plot twists arent' as well worked out as they could be. Still, Mosaic Virus is a good, thoughtful, at times paranoia-inducing, winter's day read.
February 13, 2007

Richard LaBonte from Books to Watch out For's Review  
Mosaic Virus, by Carlos T. Mock, Floricanto Press, [...]
By Richard LaBontew from Books to Watch out For

It's 1983, and young Catholic priests are dying mysteriously. A concerned
Vatican calls in hotshot Father Javier Barraza, an Argentinian-born Jesuit
with a built-in disdain for his Church's more repressive dogmas - and more
longing in his soul for a childhood sweetheart, now a very special FBI
agent, than a priest of his stature ought to have - to investigate the viral
epidemic decimating America's priesthood. Part medical thriller and part
Vatican expose (quite reminiscent of church-insider Andrew Greeley's many
novels set in the shadowy world of Vatican politics, ambition, and ego),
Mock's timely novel stitches together Catholic homophobia, AIDS conspiracy
musings, and one particular Cardinal's thuggish self-interest, as the duo
dig into decades of criminal cover-ups and deadly deceit - an investigation
into the unleashing of a horrific "mosaic virus" that causes Barraza to
question his Catholic faith. AIDS and the Vatican intersect most
imaginatively when, as characters, real-life flight attendant Gaetan Dugas,
said to be Patient Zero of the AIDS epidemic, is seduced as a seminarian by
Francis Cardinal Spellman, whose queer ways are the stuff of legendary lore.
That's the kind of kinky heresy that gives this book its zip. Mock, at one
time a practicing doctor, gets pretty detailed with medical facts and
theoretical extrapolations; his story, brisk enough to carry readers over
the expository bits, ends with the priest and the FBI agent flying to an
unnamed destination with an antidote that could end an epidemic - until, in
something of a cliffhanger, a plane - their plane? - is shot down. Seems a
sequel is in the works...
February 06, 2007
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