Preview of Legion Summary:

Legion opens with police lieutenant William Kinderman meditating upon evil in the world, then flexing to consider the good, in one smooth motion. The setting is soon revealed as that of a particularly horrible murder, the first in a series; but throughout the scene—and the novel as a whole—Kinderman's ruminations alter nate with, and are given at least as much weight as, the homicide investigations. "It seems to me," Kinderman tells his friend, Father Dyer, "the whole world is a homicide victim."

Indeed, the central themes of Legion are theological: the problem of pain, the existence of evil, the argument from design—does the complexity and purposefulness of nature imply a creator?—faith versus proof, and the nature of death and possibility of life afterwards. These issues are primarily talked out, by Kinderman in conversation with Father Dyer, with a pain specialist...