The Melrose Secret: A Novel

William Bain
iUniverse (2007)
ISBN 9780595454587
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (1/08) 


William Bain’s “The Melrose Secret” is another one in the nowadays rather lengthy line-up of the books inspired by “The Da Vinci Code.” It is part suspense, part romance and part borderline science-fiction; yet all of it is a whirlwind read. The book starts really strong and draws the reader in quite quickly. 

Lawyer Alan Bruce is called to his ancestral home in Scotland by Sir Jock Bruce, the elderly and quite ill head of the Bruce family. A family secret is about to be exposed and a very unique relic – the hair of Jesus – is in danger of being used in a highly dangerous way. Mark Varley, who is employed by an American preacher named Jackson Ford, somehow found out about the whereabouts of the relic and he is very much determined to get hold of it and eventually clone Jesus Christ, believing that he could greatly gain in the process. Varley is dangerous and does not stop at anything – even human lives are cheap in his eyes. Alan Bruce and a family friend, biologist Kate Harris, are faced with the difficult task of stopping Varley and his cronies. Will they succeed? Will the bad guys accomplish their goal and clone one of the most prominent figures of all times?

While the book starts very strong and the story has a lot of pull in the beginning, I felt that it lost a lot of steam in the second half. The cloning part and its results were quite a letdown as far as I am concerned and the reactions and reasoning of the bad guys felt quite flat. While I found the characters of Alan and Kate likeable and believable, there were moments where their motivations and reactions seemed slightly odd and even artificial. At the risk of sounding repetitive by mentioning “The Da Vinci Code” again, I have to say that the latter kept my interest until the very last page and the series of “revelations” really surprised and delighted me; while “The Melrose Secret” felt diluted and weakened after the first 150 pages or so. Another issue that bothered me greatly was the lack of editing and the extremely erratic punctuation. A good editor could have helped this book to go from a good read to a great one.

Overall I found “The Melrose Secret” an amusing, yet quite lightweight read. While it raised some interesting moral dilemmas and questions, it failed to grab my interest completely and it was unable to hold it for long. It would make for a decent read on a long airplane ride or in a doctor’s office, but it would not be on my list of books to take to a desert island.

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