Ray Keating, Warrior Monk: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel (Manorville, NY: Keating Reports, 2010), 441 pp., trade paperback, $18.00.

Espionage, romance, murder, Islamist terrorism, environmental extremists, church suppers, New York cops, revisionist theology, adultery, religious reactionaries, divorce, papal missions, organized crime, the press conference Mrs. Spitzer did not give, every congregation's usual suspects, conspiracy, the obligations of chastity, sleazy politicians, the geography of Long Island, police procedural, camaraderie among the clergy, obnoxious news media types, Christian ethics, the new ecumenism, and the real housewives of the Suffolk County suburbs… all in one single novel?

Well, yes. Veteran business journalist (and, let us mention in the interest of full disclosure, an ALPB board member) Ray Keating has combined them all in his first work of fiction, Warrior Monk, a trail of tears and laughter up and down the Long Island Expressway.

The flawed and fearless hero is one Pastor Stephen Grant, a Lutheran parish pastor whose endeavors prior to his call to holy orders had included duty as Navy SEAL and work as a CIA assassin. In his past profession in intelligence, he had also done some undercover work actually under the covers with a sultry CIA colleague, who has not at all forgotten his prior ministrations to her. And an attractive lady parishioner is also less than blind to her valiant pastor’s charms. Nor is Grant oblivious in return.

Though Pastor Grant has in no way regretted or repudiated his past service to his country, now at age 42 he is striving to get his newly built church building squared away, putting the attendant construction hassles within and without the congregation behind him, and getting on with being church.

However, a murder by an intruder during choir practice at St. Mary’s lets loose a chain of events wherein all of Pastor Grant’s spiritual strength and CIA experience will be required front and center. Owing to his singular Langley past and current work in bonding with other orthodox clergy across the formal lines of faith communities, he becomes something of a point man for an ecumenical papal visit to the United States. Coeval with the visit are terrorist plans to mount an attack in metro New York, as well as other nefarious efforts to disrupt and defeat the Pope’s mission.

Throughout Warrior Monk, there are serious conversations about church and society as well as what C.S. Lewis’ “mere Christianity” really means. And North American Lutherans have their own proclivities and foibles explained with dead-on accuracy. Keating knows the church in North America well, as he does the contemporary political and journalistic worlds.

By way of mild critique, Keating seems to have personally accomplished, witnessed, or thoroughly researched just about everything detailed in Warrior Monk, except maybe the inside-baseball of a covert operative. The CIA does not actually possess designated assassins in the Clandestine Service or what would have been the Directorate of Operations during Stephen Grant’s tenure. Nor would a case officer ever have the cover of “analyst.” And some of the tradecraft, such as employing commercial cell phones to pass highly classified information, diminishes a bit of authenticity. Furthermore, a man cannot “join” the SEALS, but becomes one in a regimen where the only easy day was yesterday. Perhaps the modus operandi of the environmental extremists may be something of a reality stretch.

But this is a good read, both as pure thriller entertainment and for pondering the Christian mind and milieu in the early twenty first century. I look forward to Pastor Grant’s future adventures.

Raymond J. Brown is an ALPB board member and an emergency manager living in New Hampshire.