"What I'm talking about is knowledge. Knowledge is lived, not forgiven. ... It's an old Druid idea but an interesting one. Knowledge can't be forgiven. We can be forgiven for our deeds, maybe for our thoughts. But once you know something, there's no forgiveness because there's no unknowing." —Toom Taggart

Finding the church archivist dead in the temple complex was somewhat awkward for the RLDS church hierarchy. What was the archivist doing in the temple in the middle of the night and what was he doing with President Fred M. Smith's declaration of supreme directional control?

For the public relations department, this was all a day's work—something not so very difficult to explain away with a few carefully worded phrases. That would have been that, had the director of church education, erstwhile philosopher Toom Taggart, not smelled something rotten on the second floor.

Alternately suspenseful and humorous, The Angel Acronym romps through the corridors of religious orthodoxy and the pages of history to probe the perplexities of religious truth, public image, and a bureaucratic mindset.

Toom Taggart wondered while waiting to see the Presiding Bishop why he had not thought to bring his volume of Spinoza to read. How much more satisfying it would have been to contemplate the cosmos rather than to think about the bishop's current preoccupation with the place of angels in the modern world.

Or he might have brought the puzzle he was working on—an intricate matrix that showed the improbable coincidences that had to converge to produce the church archivist's death. It was a question that lingered in Toom's mind.

Meanwhile, he had plenty on his plate. There was the lovely Marie in the legal department whose misgivings about the bureaucracy was only one aspect of their complicated relationship; the ambitious church historian who kept everyone busy doing anything but history; and the security man, Louis T. Cannon—strong arm of the second floor—who warned Toom to stop asking questions about the archivist's death.

Paul Edwards draws from these diverse threads to spin a masterful yarn that is wry and fast-paced and leaves readers eager for the next installment.

Paul M. Edwards is the author of nine previous books, all non-fiction, ranging from philosophy to the Korean War. As past director of the RLDS Temple School in Independence, Missouri, he draws on his own experience to breathe life into the Spinoza-reading detective, Toom Taggart.

Edwards earned a doctorate from St. Andrews University in Scotland; he has been a professor of philosophy at Park University in Kansas City, vice president of Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, and president of the John Whitmer Historical Association and the Mormon History Association. Currently he directs Graceland's Center for the Study of the Korean War.