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The Devil's Advocate (West novel)The Devil's Advocate is a 1959 novel by Australian author Morris West. It forms part of West's "Vatican" sequence of novels, along with The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963), The Clowns of God (1981), and Lazarus (1990).
Plot
Father Blaise Meredith, an urbane and cultured English priest who has passed his unexceptional life at the Vatican, is diagnosed with a terminal disease. He is sent from Rome to a small Calabrian village (Gemello Maggiore) as 'devil's advocate', investigating the life of Giacomo Nerone, a dead local being promoted for sainthood. Meredith has been chosen by Cardinal Marotta for this task, as someone learned and meticulous, perhaps lacking in charity or passion, but not in precision. Meredith expects to die quite soon. Gemello Maggiore's residents are promoting Nerone's cult which will bring prestige and prosperity to a typically post-war, impoverished, rural community in Southern Italy.
Meredith discovers that Nerone was in fact a deserter from the British army, who had an illegitimate son by a local woman, and was executed by Communist partisans towards the end of World War II, yet is a man revered in his small village. In the process, Meredith meets the local Mayor, the Contessa (dissatisfied, ageing beauty, socialite and landowner), her house-guest (a homosexual painter from Rome), Nerone's mistress and their illegitimate son, now a handsome teenager whom the Contessa and her painter friend want to adopt and move to Rome (i.e. corrupt). Caught between these conflicting individuals and motives, Meredith struggles to understand the truth about the alleged saint, fulfil his final duty for the Roman Catholic church, and come to terms with his own mortality and challenged religious faith.
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