Book review: The Advocate by Randy Singer

The sixteenth book I read in 2015 was The Advocate by Randy Singer.  I really, really enjoyed the first three hundred pages of this book in which Singer follows the career of a Roman lawyer through his education at the feet of Seneca and infatuation with a Vestal Virgin to his first posting in the backwater of Palestine as the result of political maneuvering.  The depiction of daily life in first-century Rome is both immediate and engaging, and an outsider's perspective on the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus, while fictional, is believable and offers a new viewpoint on well-worn events.

Theophilus's return to Rome and prominence as the political tides shift is also a fascinating story, particularly the depiction of gladiators and Vestal Virgins as the professional sports heros and celebrity starlets of their society, and it culminates in a thrilling assassination plot that can be made to fit with historical fact.

The final one hundred fifty or so pages, however, became as flat and predictable as the first two-thirds of the book were riveting and surprising.  The seemingly insurmountable obstacles to Theophilus's romantic happiness are conveniently surmounted; Paul's trial is as unbelievable as Jesus's was engaging (at one moment, witnesses to the risen Christ cannot be located given weeks of searching the far reaches of the empire by multiple investigators, whereas a few weeks later, there are a couple literally living within Rome itself with Paul's full knowledge); and the whole thing climaxes in Fox's-Book-of-Martyrs-style torture-porn as the Christian converts are executed in the most gruesome ways possible.  (Sorry, spoiler-alert, but if you don't know what's coming when Nero takes the throne, you might want to read some more history.)

I'd advise reading first three hundred or so pages of the book as a thoroughly engaging fictional look at Roman life and history.  The end turns into any other poorly-written Christian historical fiction paperback you picked up for a few bucks at the Christian bookstore.