The Genesis Enquiry by Olly Jarvis is a hard book to place into a genre. It is a mystery blended with a thriller but it’s also a journey, focusing on the origins of life, from the views of different religions. This is the first I have read from Olly Jarvis, and it seriously won’t be the last.
Ella Blake, a QC who was at the top of her game, ran away from her life three years ago, after losing a case. We find her living in a campervan as far from the grid as she can. She decides to accept a job investigating a polymath (a truly more educated person than I shall ever be!) who has gone missing from his rooms at Cambridge University. Ella sees the job as a way to reconnect with her daughter who is a student at Cambridge too. However, it becomes clear it isn’t just a missing persons case. The missing man was researching the correlation between comets and significant historical events. The question is…what is so important about his research?
Ella and her daughter, Lizzie, who does become involved with the case, gain the help of a computer genius, Jay and Detective Hank Broady from Pheonix, Arizona. They do see the investigation moving forward but everything takes an extreme turn when lives are threatened. Who is attempting to kill them? Where is the missing professor, is he even still alive? And can they solve the mystery of Genesis?
A book that takes you from Cambridge and all over the U.K as well as to Turkey and the U.S.
I was so enthralled and engrossed in this story. The one thing I would say is even though there is religion, politics and history within this story, it never overwhelmed me. It taught me things and it gave me more to think about. I adore books that teach me, give me things to ruminate over and also really do entertain. This book entertains, to such a stellar level.
The characters have all been created to a top-notch level. Olly Jarvis has balanced a ‘heavy duty’ story so skillfully with characters that are so real feeling so I felt connected to them in one way or another, even as the pace of the story started to speed up and the story became a little more complex. This is where some authors can lose the human touch, but happily, Olly Jarvis lost none of that throughout this exciting and exhilarating book.
I am so thankful that Rebecca Collins of Hobeck Books asked me to be a part of this tour and for the copy of this book.
sharonbeyondthebooks.uk 