The Reficul Parallax: Godsquad Genesis

Jewish-Hispanic detective Jake Cohen-Garcia is whisked away from a Honolulu Police Department ceremony to an underground job interview with the Attorney General’s special task force. Identified as a Jesus freak by his agnostic wife and son, Det. Cohen-Garcia also has a reputation as a bible-thumper at the HPD. At the covert interview, Cohen-Garcia is offered the task force position because of his reputation as a charismatic Christian. The task-force mission involves locating a mystic believed to be pivotal in preventing the biblical prophecy of Armageddon. The mystic is also suspected of using local Ilocano gangs in the worship of Satan for its AB blood type, human fetus sacrifice rituals.

The book follows the task force on its missing person case from a village in Hawaii, where Jake—a former Navy Seal, has to swim with sharks to get information from a kahuna, onto Babylon where news media and mercenaries accompany him when he is threatened by an Air Force task force investigating extraterrestrial life. It is Cohen-Garcia’s interaction with his fellow task force members, and his conversations with informants and other law enforcement personnel, which provide the conduit for the crux of the author’s religious studies theme. Be prepared for instruction in all the major theological philosophies.

Along with lessons about Jehovah’s Witness, Mormonism, Catholicism, Islam, Wiccan, etc., there are cultural themes involving the importance of language in the nature of belief systems. Many of the passages are written in Hawaiian, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and other languages then translated for the reader. There are also contemporary references to movies, television, homophobia, designer fashion brands, and the evolution of secular society.

Heaukulani’s book contains a plethora of information. So much so, the reader may become bogged down in the extensive plot that drives the informative conversations, which can be artificial at times.