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Salvation Boulevard is the Larry Beinhart novel where he takes his political-satirical sensibility into the world of contemporary American evangelical megachurches. The protagonist Carl, a former cop and current PI, has joined the church for personal reasons after a hard life and is hired to investigate what looks like a campus murder at the local university. The investigation widens to involve the church's political and financial operations.
Beinhart's strengths are the texture of the megachurch operation (the political theology, the financial structure, the specific community pressures) and the careful patience of the procedural beats. Carl is a sympathetic narrator whose religious convictions are taken seriously by the book even as the larger institutional behavior is critiqued.
The book is more careful than its high-concept premise might suggest. Three stars. A solid satirical thriller. Recommended to readers of political/religious thriller fiction.
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