(This synopsis was submitted to thirteen agents in the spring of 2006.  Eleven asked to see the entire manuscript.)

WHISPER OF THE SEVENTH THUNDER — A Synopsis

A thriller by Larry Brooks

            Before salvation, there is faith. Before detonation, there must be a fuse. And before Armageddon, there will be events that comprise the beginning of the end.

            To heal from the sudden death of his wife, Gabriel Stone pours himself into the writing of a story that has haunted him since his youth. Inspired by a life-changing visit to the island of Patmos years earlier, he is fascinated with the visions beheld there by St. John The Divine while in political exile as penance for his devotion to Christ. Those visions included frightening sights delivered by what John described as the ‘seven thunders’, visions he was instructed to withhold from us, to seal up and “write them not” (Revelation 10:4). Gabriel, a advertising executive driven more by an intellectual curiosity than the discarded faith of his childhood, speculates as to what those visions might have been, perhaps key events in modern history that signal the commencement of the end of days that the Book of Revelation, believed to be authored by John, so metaphorically describes.

            He is advised by priests and psychics alike to leave this story alone, that he is venturing into dangerous territory best left to religious scholars and hacks. But he cannot shake the feeling that there is something special about his story, perhaps even ordained, and he presses forward despite the tragic loss of his wife at the moment of his completion. When the book is snatched up by an agent and a well-connected publisher for millions of dollars, his hopes and his suspicions about the prophetic purpose of his book are confirmed. His destiny, he believes, is at hand.

            Along the way he forgot about the warning from the priests and the psychics – what if, somehow, he got it all right? What if, applying an enlightened view of the modern world in his fiction, he has actually and inadvertently revealed John’s secret visions of the seven thunders? Would it be pure blind creative luck, or might something else be in play? Would forces of divinity devoted to the sanctity of scripture take drastic measures to stop him? And might the forces of darkness marshal to ensure its delivery to a public hungry for anything that feeds their need for hope in a desperate age? Even when it defies the word of God?

            Gabriel Stone, by virtue of his novel entitled Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, has opened a spiritual can of worms with global implications far beyond his understanding and his intention. He finds himself the pawn in a power play between the legions of darkness and the forces of goodness, the stakes of which are nothing short of apocalyptic. In the end it boils down to a choice – great fame, a vast fortune and the attainment of unthinkable earthly pleasures, perhaps at the cost of his very soul . . . or the sacrifice of everything he knows and desires to stop a diabolical plan to derail the will of God, with nothing but blind faith and courage to sustain him.

            As Gabriel Stone discovers, this choice awaits us all on some level, with our souls as the prize. Only in this case, the fate of hundreds of innocent lives – and in the long run, of the entire world – depends on his willingness to do the right thing, not just for himself, but for all of us.

            Whisper of the Seventh Thunder is a thriller for everyone with a sense of their own soul and an awareness of the spiraling path of destruction – politically, economically and spiritually – into which the world is plummeting. It will appeal to fans of the apocalyptic juggernaut The Left Behind series, while offering a more objective thematic landscape and a literate narrative style. It will appeal to fans of The DaVinci Code in its marriage of religious tradition and speculative fiction, with stakes that resolve two millennia of speculation. These two demographics alone comprise a marketplace measured in the tens of millions, yet this book goes beyond to embrace a secular thriller readership less interested in religious prophecy for its own sake, but one that appreciates a taut story, well told, with appealing characters and high stakes, rendered with urgency and elegance.

(If you came her from the second installment of Part 10 – Writing a Killer Synopsis, CLICK HERE to return to that page.)