At 45, I’ve made a recent discovery about myself: I have a thing for protagonists who are either detectives or journalists that also happen to be ex-theologians.

This must be a thing; it can’t just be my thing. In the last year alone, I have read at least three novels that fit this criterion. This isn’t exactly a coincidence. I’ve made reading more of a priority this past year because I’ve found that reading first thing in the morning (after dropping the older kiddo off at school) and again before bed helps me control my anxiety, which had gotten worse some months before. I also try to read print books during these times (thanks to Friends of the Library sales, I am not breaking the bank). The phone most definitely does not help my anxiety; if anything, it makes it worse. I doubt that comes as a surprise to, literally, anyone.

But back to the ex-theologians: I blame Steven Spielberg.

I have to go back again, though, even further than Steven Spielberg (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, to be more specific).

For the first six years of my life, I was raised Catholic, mostly by my maternal grandmother. Her bedroom was a true haven of my childhood: an absolutely gigantic bed that I had to hoist myself onto; heavy, ornate drapes for every window, paired with gauzy ones to let in some light; and an elaborate vanity; yet nothing found in its drawers could rival the large, mirrored tray on top, mainly what it held: bottle after bottle of perfume, of all shapes and sizes. A total delight for the senses. And still the best were those times my grandma would spread out photographs from the many trips she took to Europe, her form tiny when surrounded by green countryside or grey architecture. To my young imagination, this experience was nothing short of sublime.

On her wall, of course, was a wooden crucifix. It hangs now in my closet, not because I don’t like it, but because I was overwhelmed when I moved in and there was a nail already there. Next to it hangs the checkered, button-down shirt my dad wore to his college graduation, at age 55—just to show you I do care for it.

When I was six, my mom and dad moved us to the high desert. Property was cheap there and they could afford a house. After that, there was no more religion in my daily life, or even on the big holidays of Easter and Christmas (though later in life, I did take an eight-month long course to accelerate communion and confirmation so my ex and I could be married in the Catholic Church like he wanted. I took this time very seriously, even practicing abstinence per the priest’s instructions. Every time I entered the church or we had to meet with the Father, I automatically felt like I had done something wrong and would sit up straighter in my seat. That is a whole other essay, however).

Unfortunately, my grandma started developing dementia and could no longer distinguish me from my mother once I became a teenager. I also became self-absorbed as young people tend to do, and when I was in my early twenties, she passed away in a home for seniors. The crucifix that had hung on her wall was given to me by her best friend, who had lived across the street from her for many, many years.

Enter Steven Spielberg. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in 1989, a time when everyone still watched the same movies. I don’t remember if I saw it in the threatre, but I have seen it many times since. It is one of the few movies I can and will rewatch. The scene where Indy must complete the three challenges in order to access the chamber of the Holy Grail—cue the orchestral swell and Harrison Ford’s astonished face—has done more to make me a believer than anything before or since. Surely, I can’t be the only one either.

Though my recall of this scene is strong, my memories of other experiences are, naturally, less so. For instance, I can’t recall if I read Paradise Lost in college, or even what course I would have (or could have) read John Milton’s masterpiece. And we may have only read Book 1 at that. I also know I have read several of Mike Carey’s Lucifer graphic novels, but I don’t remember specifics. College and my stint reading mostly graphic novels was over twenty years ago now. Still, this idea that Lucifer is ultimately suffering because he is no longer with God, his one true love, persists for me (also why he could not love man more than he loved God, even though he was told to do so by the very one he loved). It must have come from one of these stories, either Milton’s or Carey’s. Also, it is quite possible I am misremembering all of this.

(For what it’s worth, I also can’t remember what event it was that caused the woman in The End of the Affair, my favorite book if I had to choose (and a very Catholic book at that; coincidence, at this point, I think not), to make a “deal” with God in her mind that if her lover was not injured or killed, she would give him up, in essence, giving him up to “save” him.)

My point is, though, that Lucifer may very well have been the first “ex-theologian” type protagonist I came across. The first on a growing list.

The first one that I can remember with some certainty is Ari Thór Arason of Ragnar Jonasson’s Dark Iceland series. Ari Thór is a typical detective, soul searching and prone to moroseness. Among other factors, what made him stand out for me was that he studied theology in school and that experience informs his bouts of self-reflection and when solving cases as a newcomer in a small town.

The next protagonist is Wyman Ford in Douglas Preston’s three-book series, the first of which is Tyrannosaur Canyon. Ford is a former CIA analyst who became a private detective after studying to be a monk in New Mexico. Prior to the series starting, he lost his wife in a car bombing and quit the CIA. There is an amazing scene in Book 2, Blasphemy, where the villain is urging Ford to convert to a fanatical Christian sect at the business end of a gun, and Ford defies him with an even greater pledge to his Catholic faith.

It wasn’t until I “met” a third protagonist that I noticed this pattern in the books I found myself gravitating toward: Christopher Lucas, a journalist in Robert Stone’s Damascus Gate, stumbles upon a terrorist plot while researching religious fundamentalism in Jerusalem. Like Ari Thór, Lucas is waylaid and prone to rumination. He also studied theology in school.

Finally (not really), I am almost done reading Mirage, a novel by Matt Ruff, whose main protagonist, Mustafa al Baghdadi, is a government agent but not an ex-theologian. This time, the connection didn’t become apparent until I read the author’s bio: Ruff’s late father was a reverend. When I read that, I became inspired to write this essay.

Once again, I couldn’t remember, but I suspected that there was a similar enough connection in James Wolff’s Discipline Files trilogy, so I did some cursory googling. It turns out that in the first book, Beside the Syrian Sea (Wolff himself being a former British intelligence officer writing under a pen name), Jonas Worth, another CIA analyst, is searching for his father (who has been kidnapped by religious fundamentalists), and Worth gets help on his quest from a priest who’s lost his way.

It is not lost on me that most of these ex-theologian protagonists are all men in some way searching for their father (with the possible exception of Wyman Ford, only because I can’t remember). The character of Ari Thór is adopted; Lucas was born out of an affair his mother had with a married man; and Mustafa, who is chasing the ghost of his wife, lives with his father, but the man is slowing succumbing to dementia. Though complicated (muddied?), in this way, each author may be alluding to man’s search for the Heavenly Father. It is also not lost on me that Indiana Jones is looking for his father in The Last Crusade and that he must find the Holy Grail in order to save him.

And finally (this time really), I need to mention Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon of The Da Vinci Code fame. I can’t speak to Langdon’s relationship to his father because I don’t remember—I read it a looong time ago—but the character is a professor assisting in an investigation having to do with the Vatican. At the time, I was not (and I’m still not) in the habit of reading popular books just because they’re popular (Nothing wrong with popular books! It makes me happy when pretty much anyone is reading anything ever), though I did read The Da Vinci Code, and the prequel, Angels & Demons. I can say with certainty that I was drawn to this particular popular book because of the Catholic connection, and that it is because of Angels & Demons that I was only too excited to order Robert Harris’s novel Conclave, a mystery concerning the selection of the new pope, or put another way: a search for the next Holy Father.

Conclave the movie comes out this month, which is how I first heard of the book, and I may or may not be seeing it in the theatre (especially since I splurged on the UK edition because of its cover). There is pretty much no way this film will be as good as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but it does star Ralph Fiennes, who also acted in the film adaptation of The End of the Affair, another movie I need to see—when I can remember to do so.