Title: The MapAuthor: By David Murrow
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
In A Nutshell: Death, Adventure and a sunday-school lesson thrown in for good measure from David Murrow, Author of Why Men Hate Going To Church. A roadmap is found that is said to contain the world's greatest discovery since the dead sea scrolls!
Although I haven't read Murrow's first book Why Men Hate Going To Church, I was familiar with the premise. The Map is a loosely based sequel, although it stands on it's own just fine.
From the first page, the book is a page turner giving the reader a quick briefing on what has happened to the author since the success of his previous book. Things take a quick turn when David meets an odd stranger while speaking at a small church in the UK. From here the book turns mysterious and you begin to wonder if what you are reading is reality or fiction. Without giving much away, I'll say that the adventure ends just over half-way through the book and the author confesses that his adventure was a made-up story. I felt that this detracted from the book in a BIG way and I must admit, I felt a little confused.
Murrow is a great writer in both fiction and non-fiction. But I just couldn't help but be confused by the design of this book. It's almost as if the author felt the need to make up a story so that we would accept his concept of a biblical map for men to follow. While I enjoyed both sides of the book, I would have much preferred The Map to be either a practical non-fiction book or a novel with a possible practical study guide. The split personality concept of this book was just too hard for me to accept.
