Ashes to Ashes: a Review
Ashes to Ashes is a novel written by the Rev. Christopher Thoma.
Two disclaimers: First, Pastor Thoma asked me to review his book, and sent me a free copy. We aren’t friends, but have met one another in person once or twice. We’ve never had a conversation beyond a quick greeting. Second, I’m not a reader of the crime novel genre. I think the only other such book that I’ve read was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. And this is a very different kind of book.
The fact that this isn’t my typical read might actually be a good thing. I don’t have anything with which to compare it, and can judge the book as a fresh reader, maybe even with a bit of naiveté.
Giving a review will be a challenge, as I don’t want to give away any spoilers. So I’m going to play it close to the vest. My copy is paperback, comes in at 354 pages, and is available at Amazon for $29.98 (hardcover), $16.99 (paperback), or $11.99 (Kindle). There is a preface, a prologue, thirty-six chapters, and an epilogue.
So I’ll cut right to the chase and say that I enjoyed the book, and recommend it - especially for readers within the LCMS: who will enjoy the Easter eggs. It is a fun read, a page-turner, and full of suspense. The reader should be aware that there is some violence and gore, and I surmise that this is typical for the genre. It is not overdone, in my opinion, and isn’t gratuitous.
The story opens with the Rev. Daniel Michaels, an LCMS pastor from Michigan, making a home visit to a troubled parishioner. She is a younger woman, and a regular and active member. Although she asked for a visit right away, Pastor Michaels was tired, and asked if he could visit her at home tomorrow. And so he does. But in the morning, he wakes up on the floor at her house, having been knocked out, his head bleeding. His parishioner, Claire Madsen, is lying on the floor a few feet away, dead.
Pastor Michaels is interviewed by the police. Upon retrieving his jacket, he discovers a flash-drive in his pocket. Something tells him not to reveal this fact. The contents sends him on an investigation that becomes a mission of justice. I can’t really say more without giving too much away. But the book gets off to a quick start. Within the first couple chapters, you will be hooked.
Pastor Michaels is a middle-aged pastor who likes to drink bourbon. He reads Logia and Chemnitz and the Greek New Testament. He leads the life of a single parish pastor serving a small town congregation. He is well-known among the townspeople. From the flash-drive, he discovers, however, that things are not as they seem. Something sinister is afoot.. And the pastor’s actions in response are not what you would expect.
The pastor-crimefighter is a theme that calls to mind G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories. Clint Eastwood has had a couple roles as a clergyman who is called upon to be an avenging angel of justice. Pastor Michaels leads a kind of double life: an unassuming whiskey-sipping Lutheran pastor by day, a swashbuckling crimefighting hero by night.
I think part of the charm of the book is that we all know pastors don’t really lead 007-style lives of adventure. But at the same time, pastors are engaged in a larger spiritual battle: a supernatural warfare that can, and does, take a toll on them. Our work is not glamorous or dramatic in the eyes of the world, but what pastors do in terms of fighting demons has a very real parallel to the story in Ashes to Ashes.
In that sense, I think this story is a parable of sorts: a demonstration that the pastoral ministry is engaged in a spiritual form of what Pastor Michaels (whose name calls to mind the prophet Daniel, and the possessive of the Archangel Michael) does in the novel. The story is a fantasy, and so it calls upon the reader to suspend reality. It does so in a way that is both serious (in what I believe the lesson of the novel is) and yet with just a bit of a self-deprecating, whimsical nod toward the slightly spoofy. It’s an engaging, pot-boiling narrative that keeps moving. There is a serious message, but it is wrapped in a fun story.
I found myself wondering how the author was going to bring the story to a conclusion. But Pastor Thoma pulled the threads together and brought the book to a satisfying close, one that happens just across the Mississippi river from where I live.
The theme of the book is not what one might expect: a gospelly package wrapped up perfectly with a ribbon and a bow and bumper-sticker theology. Rather, it is messy and gritty, like the real world. The theme is rather one of justice.
I’ll just conclude with a quote which includes a bit of Pastor Michaels’s preaching:
“In John fifteen,” Daniel started, “our Lord says, ‘Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.’ We treasure those words. We inscribe them upon monuments. We stich them into banners. We teach them to our children. Yet if we listen closely, we discover that our Lord is not sharing a gentle bedtime story. He is framing a very real battlefield, one so many know well….
“Too often,” he said, voice becoming firmer, “the world mistakes Christian meekness for passivity. It assumes that turning the other cheek means closing one’s eyes to evil. It believes that loving our enemies is the same as forgetting justice. But the Scriptures never confuse grace with cowardice.” He turned a page of his sermon, even though he was not following it. “Our Lord turned tables. He rebuked rulers. He saw through veneers. He called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. He called evil by name. He was gentle with the broken yet fierce with the wolves.”