Agnostic in bed with science and religion

London-based Australian writer Nikki Gemmell has become synonymous with her R-rated best-seller, The Bride Stripped Bare. The joke is that she penned it anonymously. There's no such diffidence with the release of her new novel, The Book of Rapture. In fact, Gemmell's name sits boldly on the cover. Could it be because this time the uneasy bedfellows are science, religion and family?

Initially Rapture appears to borrow directly from its predecessor. A mysterious manuscript finds its way, through several channels, to the public domain. We are told that the book 'is a historical enigma. Its author, provenance and audience are unknown to us ... Near the beginning, and at the end, is the haunting statement, "Now is the time when what you believe is put to the test".'

Under the microscope is the sanctity of marriage and family. It looms large as both testament of love and as ball and chain for the three young children at the heart of the book. We learn that it's their mother — fearless and ferocious in her love for them — whose deadly ambition has put their lives in danger.

Details are revealed slowly. The children have been drugged and taken to a safe house. They are alone because their parents are fugitives, having broken away from the nefarious Project Indigo, a government-sponsored eradication scheme, which only their mother, a scientist, can put into action. Their father, Motl, is absent; their mother, nameless, somehow nearby, but inexorably cut off.

'So. They are in there. Your children,' the narrative opens. 'Close but you cannot reach them, talk to them.' Such is the heart-quickening urgency created by Gemmell's twitchy staccato. I read that the book was inspired by her fierce reaction to the London bombings in July 2005. So it's no wonder she pulls out all stops in breathing life into these impish souls, delighting in each detail, nuance and rivalry of the sibling dynamic.

This rendering makes the force that shadows the children's every move all the more invidious. Gemmell sure knows how to get the hairs on the back of the neck to bristle: 'Rain whipped. Sky pressing into the land, pummelling it; wet hammering the windows like a giant flinging pebbles; as if heaven itself was stopping anyone listening in.'

At the core of the threat is the doctrine: 'Do