Review: The Celestial Gate Murders by Thomas Chung

A multilayered mystery exploring everything from techno-fascist evil to faith-based charlatans, The Celestial Gate Murders by Thomas Chung is a dramatic international thriller.

When 20-year-old Eunyoung mysteriously vanishes, leaving behind only a note explaining her desire to “experience a new world,” it sends her parish and chorus of friends into a quiet panic. However, she isn’t the only parishioner to go missing – a catechumen and a new friend of hers named Kim Yongbin has also gone off-grid, and some have speculated that their sudden disappearance could be linked to the The Celestial Gate – a secretive cult known for infiltrating churches and luring away the most vulnerable members.

Making good on his promise to care for the flock, Father Antonio takes a personal interest in the missing lambs of the flock, but quickly finds that most of the authorities try to keep their distance from the zealous sect. The deeper he digs into the organization, the more tangled and sinister the case becomes, and when the suspected kidnapper is found murdered, the priest’s amateur sleuthing ratchets up to the highest possible stakes. From beheaded blood-red doves and blindfolded rendezvous to cryptocurrency cabals, meritocratic cults, and backroom arms dealing, Father Antonio plunges headlong into a hunt that could easily end with meeting his maker.

As a slow-burning procedural novel, Chung patiently unravels the tight knot of this drama by drawing on different narrative forms, including witness testimonies and flashbacks, which keeps the storytelling fresh and engaging. The prose offers a solid balance of exposition, action, and character development, along with red herrings and sharp turns that make this sprawling plot anything but predictable.

While the novel begins with a rather straightforward plot – a missing girl, worried friends, and a sluggish law enforcement response – it quickly expands into a much more thrilling and sinister mystery, one that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. For those who question organized religion or have their well-deserved doubts about deifying particular people, there are plenty of chilling themes in this novel that will validate these suspicions. The overlap of Eclarion’s cutting-edge tech with the ancient art of spiritual manipulation creates a poignant contemporary comparison, as the allure of something too good to be true is clearly a perennial temptation.

Dongwook the detective is one of a handful of characters that comes into clear focus through the narrative, but most of the other supporting cast serve their purpose without much depth or multi-dimensionality. Initially, the complexity of the Korean names mixed with baptismal/anglicized versions can be a bit confusing, particularly for Western readers, but once the large cast of characters settles into place, the dialogue and interactions become easier to follow. There are a few other technical critiques, such as an overuse of adverbs, occasionally awkward syntax, and a tendency to add unnecessary details that don’t entirely contribute to the plot’s progress. This extraneous prose could certainly be trimmed down, along with some of the typos that a spellcheck might miss.

Aside from these minor issues, Chung’s novel is a captivating dive into the darkness of blind belief, and the corruptive forces that touch even the most sacred spaces, resulting in a smartly written and highly original international mystery.