Conclave: The bestselling Richard and Judy Book Club thriller

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Nothing is considered too insignificant for it to be excluded, including the poor quality of the catering that visitors to the Vatican must suffer. Conclave is fun but ultimately proves so silly that it just can't stand comparison with his earlier work.

I then put off reading it – partly busy reading other stuff and partly from a slight sense of nervousness that not even Harris could pull off an interesting thriller about a papal election. I am not a Roman Catholic so couldn’t say whether every little detail of dress, procedure and so forth was strictly accurate, but I always feel, that unless they are glaring, minor lapses don’t affect a rattling good novel. Harris was after all a political journalist, and the election of a pope is a supremely political event – albeit with a relatively small electorate – indeed the College of Cardinals has often been referred to as “the most sophisticated electorate in the world”. His work has been translated into forty languages and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. All I really remember is that we no longer had to go to mass every morning at 6:30 am, before school started, that mass was no longer in Latin and that the nuns started wearing shorter habit, shorter veils and in different shades of pastel.What I do know is that in Conclave the sequence is very simple and pleasing indeed: the pope dies, the cardinals gather, there is the first ballot, there is the second ballot, there is the third ballot, and so on, each stage being accompanied by another twist, some new mystery or complication. He remembered riding with the Holy Father in this very car early in his papacy when two elderly monsignors had got in. Robert Harris nos presenta uno de esos supuestos en esta magnífica novela, y la sitúa aproximadamente al fallecimiento del actual Papa Francisco, aunque este nunca sea mencionado en dichos términos. Firstly: The cloistered nature and setting of the Conclave – which naturally and greatly adds to the uncontrived tension and claustrophobia of the novel (a setting which must be a gift to an author such as Harris). It shows in the lovely details he gives of the process, the location, the traditions, day-to-day life and dedication involved.

Among the possible chosen ones there is cardinal Tedesco the traditionalist, cardinal Tremblay the ambitious North American and Cardinal Adeyemi the African with strong views on the role of women and gay marriage.

The book is set in the context of the death of a pope and the subsequent papal conclave to elect his successor. But it is the kind of book one must approach with an open mind, any pre conceived notions will spoil it for you. Es mangelt auch an allerlei haarsträubenden Verschwörungstheorien, die zwar unterhaltsam aber vollkommen unglaubwürdig sind. While the intricacies of institutional procedures may be fascinating to Robert Harris, they don’t necessarily provide the drama and entertainment demanded by the readers of fiction. Men of God, be they priests, Monsignors, Cardinals, or the Pope himself are, after all, men and by nature, not without sin.