The Testament of James (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens) (26 page)

* Strongly recommended

The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Leonard Shlain

Viking, 1998

Book Row

Mondlin & Meador

Carroll & Graf 2004,

The Book That Jesus Wrote: John’s Gospel

Barbara Thiering

Doubleday, 1998

Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond

Viking, 2005

Forged: Writing in the Name of God — Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Bart D. Ehrman

HarperOne, 2011

A History of Christianity

Paul Johnson

Atheneum, 1977

*
How Jesus Became Christian

Barrie Wilson

St. Martin’s Press, 2008

*
Jesus, Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

Bart D. Ehrman

Oxford University Press, 1999

*
The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection

Holger Kersten & Elmar R. Gruber

Element Books, 1994

*
The Jesus Papers: Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History

Michael Baigent

Harper, San Francisco, 2006

The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed

Bart D. Ehrman

Oxford University Press, 2006

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible And Why

Bart D. Ehrman

Harper, San Francisco, 2005

*
The Passover Plot: A new Interpretation of the Life and Death of Jesus

Hugh J. Schonfield

Bernard Geis Associates, 1965

Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origin of Religion

R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Jonathan Ott, and Carl A.P. Ruck

Yale University Press, 1986

*
Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion

Edited by Thomas B. Roberts

Council on Spiritual Practices, San Francisco 2001

The Resurrection

Geza Vermes

Doubleday, 2008

The Resurrection of the Shroud: New Scientific, Medical and Archaeological Evidence

Mark Antonacci

M. Evans and Co., 2000

*
The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries

R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A.P. Ruck

Helen and Kurt Wolff / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1978

The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ?

Ian Wilson

Doubleday & Co. 1978

Truth and Fiction in
The Da Vinci Code

Bart D. Ehrman

Oxford University Press, 2004

The Works of Josephus

Translated by William Whiston

Hendrickson Publishers, Lynn, Mass., 1982

Deep in the Nevada desert, in a hidden mansion full of old books and vintage clothes, guarded by five anthropomorphic cats and a family of Attack Roadrunners, Vin Suprynowicz went cold turkey from a 40-year newspaper career. They said he’d never write anything over a thousand words, again. But with the help and encouragement of the Brunette and a few close friends, he came back. With
The Testament of James
, he proved them wrong. Before his recovery, Vin wrote
Send in the Waco Killers
,
The Ballad of Carl Drega
, and the freedom novel
The Black Arrow
.

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.

What people are saying about
The Miskatonic Manuscript
:

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The Miskatonic Manuscript
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—
Claire Wolfe
, author of the books
101 Things to Do ‘til the Revolution
and
Don’t Shoot the Bastards (Yet)
.

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“The prisoner will approach the bench.”

One burly, shaved-bald bailiff took Windsor Annesley’s right elbow, and another his left, and between them the men in their gold-bedecked beige uniforms, their fat-butted German pistols swaying in their black fabric holsters, shuffled him out into the center of the courtroom, turning him to face black-robed Judge Fidelio Crustio, who loomed several feet above his head, the “bench” being an elevated platform with a false plywood front designed to resemble a huge cedar desk.

Judge Crustio’s slicked-back hair, graying at the temples, was parted higher on his head than was currently the fashion, making him look like a throwback to Prohibition days. The prisoner was dressed in a bright orange prison jump suit, his hands manacled and his ankles also chained and shackled, an excess of restraint engineered to visually symbolize his helplessness before the majesty of Judge Crustio’s court.

The sentencing of the president of the Cthulhian church, on multiple charges of drug trafficking, conspiracy to engage in drug trafficking, and even of drug “manufacture” (as though anyone but the Almighty could “manufacture” a dried peyote cactus) was supposedly “open to the public.” But this was one of the more elegant pieces of horseshit among the quite large pile which had characterized the weeks-long prosecution in Judge Crustio’s courtroom.

In fact, the “public courtroom” had precisely 32 seats outside the now-empty jury box — the hand-picked jury having been dismissed after delivering its unanimous “Guilty” verdicts as instructed by Judge Crustio, who had told them they had no choice but to enforce the
law — and most of those 32 seats were taken up today by police and prosecutors anxious to savor their day of triumph — two of them by assistant prosecutor Sturm Wolfson and Providence Police Sergeant Phil Robichaux.

The Constitution had been written to limit government power by dividing it not just among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches (which were not intended to cooperate, but rather to jealously limit each other — “gridlock” being the very idea), but also among the federal, state and local levels. The promise had been that the central, “federal” government would thus be kept always far from the affairs of the local people, concerning itself primarily with treaties, foreign trade, and so forth. Thus, if it was not exactly the job of state and local prosecutors like Sturm Wolfson — and even Rhode Island District Judge Fidelio Crustio — to defend Windsor Annesley against what was primarily a federal “War on Drugs,” it was certainly the intent of the Founders that such men would jealously guard the rights of such a local citizen against any unconstitutional federal trampling.

Instead, in the interests of “making prosecutions easier” and giving everybody a step up the career ladder, such distinctions had long since been thrown out the window. State, federal, and local authorities now gleefully cooperated in regional “multi-jurisdiction task forces” designed to track a “drug suspect,” seize all the assets he might otherwise use to hire a good attorney (long before he was even charged, let alone convicted of anything), sic the IRS on him (all “drug dealers” being presumed to evade the income tax, since any pretense that “drug income” reported to the IRS would remain confidential was now reduced to a knee-slapper), et cetera.

In fact, Sturm Wolfson hadn’t personally prosecuted the case — that honor, and with it the headlines and the pictures in the paper, had been reserved for the elected attorney general himself. But he was the one who had worked closely with Phil Robichaux to ensnare lesser members and even former members of the Church of Cthulhu on minor drug and other offenses, then threatening to jail them for
decades on trumped-up “conspiracy” or “trafficking” charges unless they “rolled over” and turned state’s evidence.

“Turning” those witnesses into police spies had proved so valuable that Wolfson and Robichaux had been rewarded with a pair of precious seats here in the courtroom to join in the triumphal celebration of the legal disemboweling of their collective prey, Windsor Annesley. Could a cherished political appointment as U.S. Attorney for the District of Rhode Island for Sturm Wolfson — and his own “Special Weapons and Tactics” squad for soon-to-be “Lieutenant” Phil Robichaux — lie far behind?

Thus were the 32 precious seats in the “public courtroom” doled out as trophies to the victors, whose triumph had of course been assured from the outset. With juries carefully stacked through the “
voir dire
” screening process (unlike the true Anglo-Saxon juries which for thousands of years had been randomly selected from the populace, thus guaranteeing the inclusion of a few members who would refuse to enforce any unpopular law — see the “Fugitive Slave Act”), convictions in drug cases now ran better than 98 percent.

Hundreds of members of the Church of Cthulhu might be demonstrating outside, as well as hundreds more sympathizers not actually belonging to the church but outraged at the sentence Judge Crustio was reportedly preparing to hand down in this celebrated “drug” case. But they would not have been allowed anywhere near this courtroom, even had they been willing to submit to the multiple indignities of being required to remove their shoes and belts, paraded through metal detectors and drug-sniffers both animal and chemical, and finally groped about the gonads by the courthouse’s specially trained blue-gloved metrosexuals.

Nor had the defense’s expensively obtained expert witnesses ever been allowed to enter Judge Crustio’s courtroom or be seen by the jury. As their time had been paid for, biochemists and psychiatric researchers with credentials as long as your arm, flown in to testify about the usefulness and non-addictive nature of psychoactive drugs, and how their promising research had been almost entirely stymied
by the irrational federal ban, now sat watching the proceedings over closed-circuit TV in an adjoining courtroom, as did a Native American shaman who would have testified that psychoactive plants like the peyote cactus — incorrectly named “hallucinogens,” a term better applied to hypnotics like scopolamine — formed a part of his people’s legitimate, though heavily restricted, religious practice.

The judge had refused to let any of them testify — had refused to let the defense present much of any defense, once they made clear they had no intention of claiming “Some Other Dude Done It.”

“Not germane,” Judge Crustio had ruled over and over again: “Irrelevant; not a defense permitted by law.”

As rare book dealer Matthew Hunter, who lectured from time to time on the literature of the entheogens at the university on the hill, had been the only person the last-mentioned Apache holy man had known in the city, he had gladly volunteered to serve as old Emilio’s host and guide during his visit here, which explained why he, too, had braved the metal detecting rigmarole and was now sitting in the adjoining courtroom, watching the sentencing on a large but low-quality closed-circuit television screen — the multi-million-dollar courthouse having not yet caught up to the technology available for watching major league baseball at the tavern across the street.