The Judas Case

by Nicholas Graham

Yehuda from Kerioth was the most able undercover agent that the Temple guard ever produced.

After eighteen months of meticulous preparation infiltrating the entourage of a Galilean holy man and would-be king of Israel, Yeshua from Nazareth, he came to Jerusalem at Passover and pulled off his greatest coup. Two days later he was dead. What went wrong?

Retired spymaster Solomon Eliades is called back from his vineyard to investigate the death of his protegee. But secrets from his own past – and the search for an inconveniently missing body – put him and his family in danger...

320 pages, Paperback

Published August 28, 2022

Reviews

[Stephen Badsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

The spy novel meet the Easter story, head on.
It is Passover, and Judas Iscariot is dead, found hanged. He was a Temple asset, spying on a subversive group whose leader has just been crucified. Jerusalem is about to boil over into riots again. The Romans are involved, Herod is involved, it is very political, very sensitive. Judas’s old handler, Solomon Eliades, is brought reluctantly out of retirement to discover what really happened, leaving his beloved and formidable wife Zenobia in safety, or so he thinks. High IQ and high octane, this is the sort of book you actually have to put down, to think about the implications of what you have just read. A formidable plot is set in an utterly coherent Biblical world of sights, smells, sounds, language, behaviours and attitudes, plus some Easter eggs to make the reader smile: who is ‘bar Ptolemai’? try saying the name quickly. In Solomon Eliades, Nicholas Graham has created what is surely one of the great characters of historical fiction, accompanied by a supporting cast of living people that we can care about, and want to know what happened to them next. A sequel is already on the way.

[D.K. Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written novel by the erudite Nicholas Graham. Set in Biblical times, this is absolutely not a book that staunchly evangelical Christians are going to enjoy but everyone else will. There is much that you will recognise from the Gospel stories and, of course, many of the same characters appear. But Graham manages to give us a very different story to that which we are traditionally told. This is a deeply political world full of spies and secret plots waiting to be uncovered.

While it is a whodunnit - the body of Yehuda is just the start - the reader is actually far more interested in Solomon, our hero of the piece. In this sense, the book is a beautiful work of art. As I've often said in my reviews, a good novel is one where I care about the characters after the last page is turned. My goodness, with this novel I was instantly reaching for the sequel through the ether, trying to clutch a book that does not (yet) exist because I HAVE to know what happens to Solomon. It is to be hoped that the author will embark on more books covering this protagonist as we've not had enough of Solomon and his vineyard yet!

As historical fiction, the novel is as flawless as any other I've come across no matter the genre. I am reasonably schooled in Biblical history and theology and while no expert I am very familiar with the turf. Graham knows his stuff and it tells in the incredible details he scatters liberally - yet never intrusively - throughout the story. I feel like I'm there when reading the story. There's never a moment where the magic is lost; never a time when you can't believe you're in Palestine. It takes quite some skill to pull that off. Has Graham succeeded in pulling the wool over all our eyes all of the time? Well, he has succeeded with this reader, that's for sure.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in Biblical era fiction which gives alternative meaning to events of the Gospels that is utterly convincing and compelling. Whodunnit fans will enjoy it but so will anyone who just wants to read well-written fiction which is beautiful in the telling. Gripping and moving to the very end.

[Nicholas Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

The hallmark of great detective fiction is when an author creates a hero we greet as an old friend. Solomon Eliades, Jewish wine-grower and former spymaster, strides across the stage of 1st century Judaea as if we’d known him for years. With his training in philosophy and rhetoric in Athens (so useful for inciting and calming riots) and with a lifetime’s career of espionage behind him, he brings a wealth of experience and talent to the task that calls him out of retirement, the urgent need to discover what happened to Judas Iscariot, one of his Service’s best agents.

Solomon Eliades, “the man who could find out the truth of things”, weaves his way through a tangled and at times murderous web of Jewish and Roman inter-Service rivalry to unlock the puzzle of Judas’s death and the disappearance of Jesus’s body from the tomb. Assisted by an enigmatic young Saul of Tarsus and with the help of sympathetically drawn and fully-rounded characters such as Nicanor, the Alexandrian doctor, Solomon Eliades, surviving beatings along the way, does get to the end of the road but at great personal cost. But then, as he says himself, “My vineyard is my own to give.”

With its strong sense of place and time and atmosphere, there is a definite cinematic quality to ‘The Judas Case’. Like Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’, ‘The Judas Case’ is crying out to be filmed. I hope that before too long some film production company will spot the potential.

[Colette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first century detective story.
The book starts with the death of Yehuda from Kerioth, an agent who had spent eighteen months getting close to Yeshua from Nazareth, the man who claimed he was a king. Now, just two days after betraying the man, Yehuda is dead. Found hanging from a tree, did he really kill himself or was it murder? Solomon Eliades, a retired spy-master is pulled away from his vineyard to find out what happened to his protegee. As well as that, there is the mystery of the missing body to be solved. Who took the body of Yeshua from Nazareth and where is it now?
The author uses words to create a wonderful atmosphere and you can almost feel the tension as Eliades is forced to face his past, a time that he hoped he had left behind. All he wants is to return to his vines and his beloved wife and he will do whatever he must to get there.
Set around Holy Week and the passion of Christ, this is obviously fiction , a possible narrative, but I don’t think that this is a book that would be enjoyed by anyone with staunch Christian views.

[David Steward · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a distinctive book that comparisons can’t do it justice. The descriptions of spycraft are as sharp and convincing as in Adam Hall’s early Quiller books. But what sets it apart is the quality of the writing. Only a writer of Graham’s skill could build a compelling mystery story around familiar biblical events. There’s also a powerful sense of place. Deighton’s Berlin is Graham’s Holy Land, and instead of the Cold War era, we’re in the age of early Christianity. Without slowing the action or distracting from the plot, Graham describes Eliades’ world in vivid and often haunting detail. Julian Symons described Deighton as “a poet of the spy story”. Graham is a poet of the historical thriller.

[Chris Arvidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous historical crime fiction read, with more hopefully to come, from writer Nicholas Graham. I'm an avid reader of historical and crime fiction and The Judas Case hits all the high notes. The setting and landscape are impeccably accurate. The characters are compelling. The plot is both entertaining and rich. I've also travelled a good bit to Jerusalem and Israel doing archaeological work and Graham's depiction of that area in the time of Jesus is delightfully detailed. Best-selling writer and historical Jesus scholar James Tabor, with whom I've visited Israel, agrees that Graham's spot-on with this book. Can't wait for the next one.

[Alan Bosher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. Brilliantly researched really takes you back to 1st century AD