The Third Secret

by Michael Parker

The Third Secret of our Lady of Fatima is removed illegally from the Vatican vaults and replaced with a bible scripture in 1941. That scripture is then shipped out with a fortune in Vatican gold, which goes missing in the war-torn Sahara desert. Twenty years after the war, the whereabouts of the gold comes to light. The Vatican want their gold returned but know nothing of the document. Now there is set in motion a chain of violent events that involve the Italian Mafia, an ex-British Army captain, and the French Foreign Legion. Can the Roman Catholic Church avoid being brought into disrepute?

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 2009

About the author

Brought up in London. Attended Sir Walter St. John's Grammar School for boys in Battersea until the family moved to Portsmouth in 1954. Continued education at Southern Grammar. Left school with no qualifications and started work as a Junior deigner at Twilfits (Corset/Brassiere manufacturer). Left after one year and joined the Merhcant Navy as a Steward. Two years later married Pat, my teenage sweetheart and went to work on a building site. Three months later I joined the RAF as an electrician. Left 16 years later on a redundancy package and worked in a food factory for a couple of years. Left and worked in the Middle East for a year. Then back to another food manufacturer (Mars) for 17 years until early retirement in 1996. Moved out to Spain with Pat in 1997. We have four sons and ten grandchildren.

I have written all my adult life with moderate success. My first novel, NORTH SLOPE was published by Macmillan in 1980. My second, SHADOW OF THE WOLF in 1984 by Robert Hale. My third, HELL'S GATE was published in 2007 by Robert Hale followed by THE EAGLE'S COVENANT (2007) and THE DEVIL'S TRINITY in 2008. This was followed by THE THIRD SECRET,in 2009 and then A COVERT WAR in 2010. My latest novel, THE BOY FROM BERLIN was released in December 2011, and has now been picked up by Harlequin who have purchased (leased) the paperback rights for North America and Canada. Harlequin have also released my thriller, THE EAGLE'S COVENANT in paperback.

Pat and I moved back to England in 2014.

Robert published my novel, PAST IMPERFECT, in January 2015. This is an romance with a hard edged back story

I self-published A Dangerous Game last year, and now have my latest novel, Where the Wicked Dwell, trying to pick up votes on Kindle Scout. Should be released some time in February.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Third Secret referred to in the title is the third secret of Fatima, the contents of which were locked away in the Vatican vaults shortly after being presented to the pope. It's not the kind of thing you want to lose, really. That's why a well-meaning cardinal took the document and secretly replaced it in 1941, after learning that the pope planned to ship it out along with a wealth of Vatican gold to WWII-neutral Portugal by way of the Sahara. As it happened, the cardinal's fears were more than justified, as the shipment disappeared somewhere in the desert. In the wake of this misfortune, the cardinal put the original prophecy back in the Secret Archives, claiming that a member of the Galliano Mafia family had returned it to him. That's all well and good, of course, but there's still a problem - the fake Third Secret is still out there somewhere, and its discovery would bring a world of discredit on the Vatican if it were ever to be found.

Two decades later, one of the gold bars turns up, setting off a race to find the rest of the treasure by a myriad of groups who have no idea that something even more valuable than a truckload of gold is involved. On the one hand, there's the Vatican, which naturally wants all of its gold back. Then there's the ex-British Army captain who led the attack on the convoy in the desert and stashed the gold away inside a mountain. Apart from Captain Miles Roselli, only one other person knows where the treasure is hidden - and he doesn't know that he knows, having lost all memory of his life before he was rescued from imminent death by native Tuaregs crossing the desert. Then you have the Galliano family getting involved because neither Roselli nor the Vatican has the resources to sneak a fortune in gold out of the nation of Chad. Throw in Roselli's daughter and a half-brother she never knew, as well as the French Foreign Legion, and you've got yourself quite a story.

Parker works all of these individuals and groups together beautifully as they all converge on the lost shipment. While they are all pursuing the same object, their goals are vastly different. Even supposed allies work at cross-purposes to one another in the pursuit of greed and - should the fake Third Prophecy note fall into the wrong hands - the ultimate bargaining chip to use against the vast power of the Vatican itself. From the horrors of war to the cloistered inner sanctum of the Vatican to a claustrophobic journey underneath the sands of the unforgiving Sahara desert, Michael Parker deftly guides this action-packed story to a conclusion that doesn't disappoint. With strong characters and plenty of intrigue along the way, The Third Secret makes for very entertaining reading.