The Colour of Blood
Jan 29th, 2008 by John
By Brian Moore
reviewed by John Murphy
The Colour of Blood is a tight, page-turning Catholic thriller in the Graham Greene tradition. The opening sequence hits the ground running: Cardinal Bem, head of the Church in an unnamed Soviet bloc country, is being chauffered back to his residence when
“He saw, peripherally, a black car racing very close to his. He turned to look. The driver, a woman, wore a green silk scarf tied around her head. Beside her in the passenger seat, a bearded man, holding a revolver in both hands, raised it, aiming at him.”
That’s just the first page. The rest of the book follows the Cardinal as he flees from unknown captors and attempts to discover what organization was behind the assassination attempt—the Secret Police, who are antagonistic to the Church, or could it have been a fringe organization within the Church, who feel that Cardinal Bem has compromised too often with the Communist government?
Written in limited third person, Cardinal Bem is in every scene of the book, on every page. He is a compelling, interesting hero—determined to do the right thing, to perform his duty to his country and to his Church, but crippled by self-doubt. Is he enough of a leader? Has his role as functionary of the Church confused his faith, made murky what should be a pure devotion to Christ? Bem is a loyal servant of Christ, but his increasingly desperate circumstances leave him pondering God’s silence.
Part of Bem’s journey strips him of his trappings as Cardinal, forcing him to confront the realities of the underworld without the armor of the Church. He has only the armor of God. This element is reminiscent of Graham Greene’s Whiskey Priest in The Power and the Glory—another pursued cleric who finds faith when he sloughs off the dead skin of surface piety to plumb the depths of grace in the darkest hour.
Brian Moore’s writing has textbook clarity: limpid, economical, and unfussy. The Colour of Blood was short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize in the U.K, and was awarded the Sunday Express’ Book of the Year. Well-crafted, suspenseful, and deeply orthodox,