By J. Warner Wallace

As much as I love a good mystery book, I also roll my eyes at the obsession with true crime documentaries and podcasts. Sure, the investigation part is cool, but no one in their right mind would want to live through that experience. However, this book caught my attention. True crime and Jesus?? 

Renowned cold case detective J. Warner Wallace had written a book (actually quite a few books) about examining Christianity through the lens of a criminal investigator. That was too unique an approach to pass up, so I ordered Person of Interest from my local public library. I hadn’t even finished the book before I was contacting my local bookstore to order every J. Warner Wallace book they could get their hands on for my church library.

As a cold case detective, J. Warner Wallace was too rational to believe all that Christian stuff. But after being coerced into attending a church service, he decided he would use his investigative skills to prove the whole Jesus thing was a hoax. Using methods paralleling a current cold case he was working on, he started investigating Jesus. What he found was shocking! 

Pros: This book was a super easy read. I absolutely loved the approach. Each chapter opened with the cold case the detective was working on (names changed, of course) and detailed what investigative methods were being used. The author then would take those same methods and apply them to his investigation into Jesus. There were illustrations, charts, sidebars with historical examples and the definitions of legal terms, etc. It wasn’t until I finished the book that I realized I had essentially taken a course in apologetics and didn’t realize it.

Cons: None that I can think of.

Bottom Line: Come for the mystery, stay for the apologetics.