'A heavy brass cross is stolen from St Timothy's Episcopal Church in New York and discovered on the roof of the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism. The crime, whose symbolism is intriguing, brings together the sceptical Reverend Thomas Pemberton and reformist Rabbi Sarah Blumenthal. They turn "divinity detectives", contemplating the case for God and religion amid the decay of a city and a world...[this] is a novel bright with invention, luminous with language...images flutter down like sycamore leaves...the sheer linguistic elan of City of God is both a constant pleasure and an indication of the resources humankind can still pitch against the evidence for despair'
