Eleven: Book of Lies - Brad Meltzer

• The first murder was committed when Cain killed his brother Abel. The murder weapon is never disclosed in the Bible.
• In 1932, Mitchell Siegel is murdered and his killer is never found. While grieving for his father, Jerry Siegel creates a bulletproof man called Superman.
• Cal Harper's dad is shot with the same gun as Mitchell Siegel and attacked by a ruthless killer with a Mark of Cain tattoo.

Here begins Brad Meltzer's thriller that attempts to solve the murder of Mitchell Siegel and the mystery behind the Book of Lies supposedly given to Cain by Adam.

Cal and his father Lloyd team up after Cal's old co-worker Timothy is killed by a crazy ex-cop Ellis on the side of the road in Alligator Alley in Fort Lauderdale. Ellis is working for the Thule Society to find the Book of Lies. Lloyd was transporting a cargo container which contained an attic comic created by Jerry Siegel. Cal and Lloyd travel to Cincinnati, Ohio to visit the Siegel house after finding out that Lloyd was shot with the same gun that killed Mitchell Siegel - Jerry's father. They uncover another set of comic strips that lead them to a historical society where Jerry Siegel donated a German bible - supposedly the Book of Lies.

Meltzer, Brad. Book of Lies. Grand Central Publishing (2008). 352 pages. ISBN 044657788X
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Brad Meltzer is another author I saw speak this fall at the National Book Festival. He was really witty and I wanted to go out and read his new book right away. This book actually comes with a soundtrack and it's own title song written especially for the book. It's interesting to see the use of Holst's Planets with Mahler & Sibelius' symphonies. There is even some Wagner & Elgar mixed in.

I read this book over the Christmas holiday in about 15 hours. I simply could not put the book down. I actually wrote my notes for this blog post after the book was finished instead as I was reading it. Meltzer knows how to grab a reader's attention and keep them wanting to keep reading. I would highly recommend this book for all the Superman fans out there. Brad has an affection for libraries and librarians and worked in some awesome library references within to the main plot. It's not often that a library call number is drawn into a comic strip as a clue.

Another exciting sidenote to this book is that Brad started a website called Ordinary People Change the World because he truly believes that ordinary people change the world. One of the first projects was raising enough money to save the childhood home of Jerry Siegel in Ohio.