Sunday, March 5, 2017

Roman Era Mystery

These Forty Days

With Lent upon us my thoughts turn to my Roman detective story The Case of the Empty Tomb which I wrote over a dozen years ago.

I fashioned it after the hard-boiled detective stories of Hammett and Chandler.

The story revolves around Tribune Claudius Maximus who is ordered to investigate the rumors circulating around  Jerusalem of a recently crucified Jew who has been seen alive.

If this sounds familiar, you might be thinking of a film released in 2016 called Risen. Here's the premise: In 33 AD, a Roman Tribune in Judea is tasked to find the missing body of an executed Jew rumored to have risen from the dead. (I took this from IMDb)

When I first saw the trailer for this movie I was stunned at how similar it was to my story. I was so stunned that I could not bring myself to go see it.

I secretly was hoping that someone somewhere would see how much the movie resembled my story, but no one did.

But this is the Lenten Season when we could all turn our thoughts to Christ. If anyone is looking to a good detective story about Christ, I would recommend The Case of the Empty Tomb.

Stephen Gaspar's books can be found on Amazon