Damascus Gate

Stone's genius as a novelist is his ability to make paranoia plausible. Damascus Gate, set in a shadowy Jerusalem and involving an apocalyptic plot to level some of its sacred architecture, assembles a characteristic Stone cast of cosmopolitan drifters, dealers, zealots, sages, thugs, and lunatics, including its at-loose-ends hero, a cynical, inquisitive, lapsed-Catholic journalist named Christopher Lucas, a beautiful biracial chanteuse (black and Jewish), and a volatile ex-Jew for Jesus who discovers an unlikely new Messiah in a psychiatrist's waiting room. The writing, often dense with metaphor and landscape, is powerful, and the result is a pulsing, profound novel about the treacheries of absolute conviction. A