Ray Johnson – författare

A beautiful slave girl, a dashing Confederate cavalry captain, potent black magic, all swirled together in a boiling cauldron of evil. Carletha, a comely young slave, desperately wants to escape from Jericho Plantation. Jeffrey, a captain with the 14th Georgia Cavalry. Needs to procure fresh mounts for his regiment. When Jeffrey arrives at Jericho Plantation he encounters not only Carletha, but also a scheming mistress and her querulous husband. Carletha has recently made an eternal compact, one that gives her the power to bend a man to her will. She can fill a mans stomach with white-hot lava or send blistering lightning bolts blazing through his brain. Jeffrey, the Confederate captain, looks like her ideal ticket for the Freedom Train.

Josh Donner is the American attorney. Cardinal Mondial, a Brazilian, is the ambitious Prince of the Church. Mei Chan is the exquisite and mysterious Chinese assassin. Three diametrically dissimilar people, from three different continents, all focused like powerful lasers on a central locus. The object of their intense interest in Strella, a beautiful novice who resides in a convent in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Strella is both a virgin and pregnant, and impossible dichotomy. Strella was left on the convent steps when only hours old. Raised as a child of the Church, her sheltered life within the ivy-covered walls of the convent is about to be disrupted by tidal forces powerful enough to change the course of history. In the wrong hands, controlled by unscrupulous people, Strella and her virgin-born child could easily shift the balance of power in the modern world.

The In Vitro Madonna was originally published in Europe. Ray Johnson likes to refer to his books as verbal movies. Like his two previous novels, The Jericho Compact and The Great Everlasting, The In Vitro Madonna carries the reader along a swift river of mystery and intrigue. A good novel, like a vintage wine, is to be savored and enjoyed at leisure, hopefully in front of the fireplace of life. A novel should leave a pleasing aftertaste on the palate of ones soul. Ray Johnson was a military officer and law enforcement officer and draws upon life experiences to weave credence into his spellbinding novels. His stated goal is to keep his readers wondering until the final paragraph on the final page. He achieves that goal in The In Vitro Madonna.