Showing Virgin by F. Paul Wilson

A two-thousand-year-old scroll is found in the Negev Desert. It describes what might be the final resting place of Mary, the mother of Jesus. To the disappointment of all, the ink is dated as less than a dozen years old. A fake. But one woman believes and goes searching. What she finds will change the world – forever.

VIRGIN is a thriller of international scope, traipsing through the Judean Wilderness, the shore of the Dead Sea, the River Lee in Ireland, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Big Sur, and the Central Pacific. It's peopled with various believers and skeptics: a priest and nun who are lovers; a cardinal who has spent his life debunking miracles and is now desperately in need of one; a US Senator with a son dying of AIDS; his vicious chief of security; and Kesev, the mysterious Israeli Shin Bet officer who was derelict in his unofficial life task of guarding the remains of "The Mother" and is determined to retrieve her remains at any cost.

And in a finale that harkens back to that 1950's film, "The Next Voice You Hear," the Virgin has news for the world – an unexpectedly secular message that will resonate with any open mind.