The First Phone Call from Heaven succeeds as a mystery thriller on different levels: for the believer in God, it is another remarkable book by an author who understands the nature of faith and the altruism of religion, a story bursting with warmth and emotion; for those with a foot firmly in the secular camp, this is a novel with enough twists and turns to enthral, it is a historical tale of the invention of the telephone, and there is no escaping a sense of vindication that the line between belief and zealotry is often one that is far too easy to blur.