Although the plot is based on an unsolved crime and the thrust of the novel is satiric, One More Sunday is by no means a McGee novel without McGee. Seen through the eyes of a number of characters, the story offers a full-scale examination of the curious mix of fundamentalist ideas, satellite broadcasting, computerized fund-raising and money management, and institutional ambition which characterizes the most rapidly growing aspect of American religious life. Specifically, the novel depicts what seems to be the beginning of the end for The Eternal Church of the Believer, now in the hands of its founder's son and daughter and besieged both from within — by greed and incompetence — and from without — by the IRS and by the threat of scandal resulting from the disappearance of a woman reporter investigating the Church's operations.

MacDonald's portrait is by no means simplistic; good...