Witness to the Crucifixion

Saint Paul, Private Eye!

It is written, in Matthew, that Jesus, on the cross, cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Was this all Jesus said? Who was present to hear him say anything at all? His disciples had fled in fear. Roman soldiers surrounded him. Was there a secret revealed at the Crucifixion — lost forever because there was no one to bear witness?

Paul, the “saint” who for ten years tormented the followers of Jesus, suffers visions of the Crucifixion. He is haunted by its secret. After fleeing near-death in Damascus, Paul begins a quest for one witness who can solve…

… the Golgotha murder mystery

Paul’s winding journey carries him far and wide throughout the Holy Land — and beyond. He faces constant danger from a host of enemies — from the King of Syria to the powerful brother of Jesus, known as James the Just.

Paul is beaten, mobbed, knifed, shipwrecked, cast away, bewitched and flung into prison. His only “friend” is a rogue apostle named Iscariot, whose death was “greatly exaggerated.”

Paul’s tortuous quest ends at last in Jerusalem, in the midnight gloom of Herod’s Great Temple. At last, Paul meets his witness and faces the most shocking revelation of his life.

David Benjamin began his career as a storyteller in Mrs. Poss’ second-grade class at St. Mary’s School in Tomah, Wisconsin. His fictional memoir, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked, originally published by Random House, was reprinted by Last Kid Books in 2019. His Last Kid Books include a collection of his essays, Almost Killed by a Train of Thought, two  short story anthologies, The Melting Grandmother and Other Short Works and Christmas in a Jugular Vein and sixteen novels, Three’s a Crowd, A Sunday Kind of Love, Summer of ’68, Skulduggery in the Latin Quarter, Black Dragon, They Shot Kennedy, Fat Vinny’s Forbidden Love, Witness to the Crucifixion, Choose Moose, Bistro Nights, The Voice of the Dog and Benjamin’s Jim Otis mystery series, Jailbait, Bastard’s Bluff, Woman Trouble, Dead Shot and Cheat. As a journalist, Benjamin has edited newspapers, published and edited several magazines, and authored SUMO: A Thinking Fan’s Guide to Japan’s National Sport.

Since its launch in 2019, Benjamin’s publishing imprint, Last Kid Books, has won more than forty independent-press awards. These include, for They Shot Kennedy, the Midwest Book Awards’ 2021 grand prize for literary/historical/contemporary fiction, and a 2022 Silver Medal for Humor to Fat Vinny’s Forbidden Love in the Independent Book Publishers Association’s prestigious Benjamin Franklin Awards.

Benjamin and his wife, Junko Yoshida, have been married for ages. They live sometimes in Madison, Wis., and the rest of the time in Paris.