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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 4h

The Pope's Hitman Advent Calendar Day 4! Counting down to pub day on 10/27/26, today's visual reference comes from Medjugorje, a Bosnian town where six kids claimed to have visions of the Virgin Mary during the 1980s. What does that have to do with a hitman? You gotta read it to find out! #booksky

Statue of Virgin Mary in Medjugorje - Bosnia Herzegovina, photo by Elbert Hampton, public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Virgin_Mary_in_Medjugorje_-_Bosnia_Herzegovina_09.jpg

An advent calendar. On the left of the calendar grid is an image of the cover of The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger, featuring a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City. A blurb reads "John Wick meets Conclave as a priest with a deadly secret will stop at nothing to protect the Pope against an explosive Christmas Eve plot with the fate of the Catholic Church at stake!" On the right is an image of Saint Peter's Basilica at night with two review excerpts:

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 29/09/2026

To read more about the many killings and confessions of Father Francis Loyola, pre-order The Pope's Hitman today! B&N: www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Pope's%20H... Bookshop bookshop.org/a/125012/979... Amazon amzn.to/4ojzmC6

"The Pope's Hitman by J.M. Berger" over a gray-toned image of the spiral Bramante Staircase in the Vatican Museums, Vatican City.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 29/09/2026

The Pope's Hitman Advent Calendar, Day 3! Very early in the book, Father Francis Loyola makes the first of many confessions at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. Confession is a major theme of the book, which I guarantee has more confessions than in any hitman book before it!

Interior of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston. The church is darkened, as it is when seen in the book. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cathedral_of_the_Holy_Cross,_Boston_3.JPG

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 28/09/2026

I often look for maps, floor plans, and satellite imagery to create environments in the book, which allows me to describe movements through spaces in a consistent manner. In certain scenes, these visual references are a big deal to maintain continuity in the action choreography.

Floorplan of the Fountains Abbey, public domain via Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/52581/pg52581-images.html

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 28/09/2026

Day 2 of The Pope's Hitman Advent Calendar! Counting down to pub day, here's a visual reference from the book's first act -- the Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire, UK, which I used as model for a Western MA location visited by Father Francis Loyola. #booksky #thrillers @crookedlanebooks.bsky.social

An open corridor inside the ruins of Fountains Abbey. Located in Ripon, Yorkshire, England, UK. Photo by Michael D Beckwith in the public domain via Wikimedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fountains_Abbey_Corridor.jpg

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 27/09/2026

You'll encounter Saint Longinus, technically just his statue, in Act 3 of The Pope's Hitman, now available for pre-order! B&N: www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Pope's%20H... Bookshop bookshop.org/a/125012/979... Amazon amzn.to/4ojzmC6 Supporting this book supports all of my work, including on extremism.

The cover of The Poe's Hitman with two review excerpts superimposed.

“Berger (Optimal), a senior research fellow at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, puts his background to good use in this riveting action thriller.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly

“This is ridiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it ... great characters ... fun premise ... crazy situations.”
-- The Optionist

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 27/09/2026

It's 30 days until the publication date of The Pope's Hitman, and I'm counting down with a seasonally and story-appropriate Advent Calendar! For Day 1, meet Saint Longinus, the Roman centurion who tradition holds pierced the side of Christ on the Cross then later became Christian.

The statue of Saint Longinus in Saint Peter's Basilica, a Roman soldier brandishing a spear.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 26/09/2026

You may already be aware that this has been tried

Rotten Tomatoes: The Jesus Rolls

20% Tomatometer
45 Reviews

23% Popcornmeter
100+ Ratings

Hours after his release from prison, Jesus Quintana pairs up with fellow misfits Petey and Marie for a freewheeling joyride of petty crime and romance.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 25/09/2026

Of course, you don't have to wait (in fact, please don't)... Pre-order now! B&N: www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Pope's%20H... Bookshop bookshop.org/a/125012/979... Amazon amzn.to/4ojzmC6

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 25/09/2026

What better way to count down to The Pope's Hitman than an advent calendar filled with the book's visual and historical references? Tune in Sunday as the countdown to October 27 begins...⚡️📚 #booksky @crookedlanebooks.bsky.social @therightsfactory.bsky.social

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 24/09/2026

I see LinkedIn has launched its AI job search

Search for "terrorism remote posted in the past month"

Unable to complete search
This search query may violate our Professional Community Policies. Edit your search to try again.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 24/09/2026

My wife and I still quote this scene to each other 20 years after seeing Santo and Blue Demon vs Frankenstein

Blue Demon, dressed as an anesthesiologist except for his trademark mask, to Santo: "As you can see, I'm not the anesthesiologist."

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 24/09/2026

If you have somehow not discovered the Santo Cinematic Universe, I promise you will not be disappointed.

Santo and the Blue Demon vs The Bermuda Triangle

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 23/09/2026

If only there were some profession or establishment that could objectively state in a headline whether this pervasive sense was based in fact.

‘I Was Sold a Bill of Goods’: Americans and the Distrust Election
Americans have a pervasive sense they are being lied to.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 23/09/2026

While I'd love to just sit back and call this being hoist by one's own petard, this is gross

Musk declined to sit for an interview, so Gibney created an AI version of Musk—drawing from a trove of interviews and public posts to create realistic versions of what Musk might have responded.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 22/09/2026

This is the actual Mortadella Princess by the way

A woman in a dress styled to look like Mortadella

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 22/09/2026

For a friend's vacation planning, I was searching for an image of the Mortadella Princess who is crowned every year at the Mortadella Festival in Bologna, Italy, and this AI nightmare fuel was one of the top 5 results. We are cooked as a society. It took me half an hour to find the actual princess.

A Lovecraftian concoction of pink meat tentacles wrapped around ambiguous greens

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 17/09/2026

I have five ARC copies of The Pope's Hitman available! If you have a pod or newsletter that would review of this upcoming thriller, or use it as a jumping off point for another kind of article or discussion (such as "creative ways to cope with the collapse of higher ed"), slide into my DMs!

Who the fuck was Father Francis Loyola?
Martina Rocha had gone to sleep asking herself that question, and it was still there when she woke up a few short hours later. She just knew it was going to swallow her entire day, so she got up ahead of the alarm, already tense in anticipation of the ten am press conference.

[A] riveting action thriller [for] fans of Frederick Forsyth’s conspiracy novels…
-- Publisher’s Weekly

[R]idiculously over-the-top and I loved every second of it.
-- The Optionist

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 12/09/2026

Claude is going to wipe out humanity just as soon as it figures out how to format a spam email header

Email header scraping the Amazon listing description of The Pope's Hitman and rendering it as one massive run-on sentence in the header of an email

The Pope's Hitman: A Novel by J.M. Berger (Author) Format: Kindle Edition John Wick meets Conclave in this fast-paced international thriller about a priest with a deadly secret who must stop a plot to kill the Pope on Christmas Eve. Everybody loves Fat...

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 09/09/2026

25% off when pre-ordering The Pope's Hitman! B&N pre-orders count for a lot! So I am offering a signed bookplate if you drop a screenshot of your receipt in my DMs. Offer runs 9/9 to 9/11. US-only, sorry! tinyurl.com/barnesandnob... @crookedlanebooks.bsky.social @therightsfactory.bsky.social

Use the code PREORDER25 for 25 percent off at checkout, valid 9/9 through 9/11

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 03/09/2026

From The Pope's Hitman! www.thepopeshitman.com

If they were here to reinforce Indigo, Loyola’s best option
was to retreat. He drew a bead on the woman again. If he took
her down, they might stop to assist her, giving him time to
escape. The distraction would be more effective if she survived,
so he zeroed in on her left shoulder, which would have the
added benefit of taking her left-handed gun out of play.
But she had also clocked the men, and she didn’t look
thrilled to see them. Not one bit. Keeping as flat as possible, he
watched to see what happened. Whatever this thing was, it
seemed to include multiple factions, and he desperately needed
intel. Loyola told himself he was being practical, but he had
arguably fallen prey to curiosity—the dead man’s vice.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 03/09/2026

It's perfect irony that I am constantly getting emails about Optimal from astroturf

knows virtually everything about its citizens and uses that information to recommend everything from their careers and food to their relationships.

What caught my attention was the contradiction at the heart of that society. People are told they have total information and total freedom, yet life apparently works more smoothly when they follow the System's

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 31/08/2026

Maybe there's some update that hasn't rolled out to me yet, but as far as I can tell, you can leave smart features on but should definitely turn off the workspace smart features.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 31/08/2026

Y'all know that Google's stealth AI tactics drive me insane, but to the best of my ability to discern, nothing has changed on this recently, and you don't have to turn off the basic smart features that put mail in folders. Not for nothing, this viral skeet comes from a competing email provider.

A skeet with scary claims about Gmail that just coincidentally comes from a competing email service.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 30/08/2026

Lucky I don't need a job! Wait, this just in, I'm being told

news anchor touching earpiece as he receives an update. you would not believe how hard it was to find an imagine of this.

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 29/08/2026

Fun fact: Nothing that happens in this book is equivalent in severity to even one day of Trump's second term

1960s/1970s book cover: NIGHT OF CAMP DAVID: WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WENT STARK-RAVING MAD?

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J.M. Berger PRE-ORDER THE POPE'S HITMAN @jmberger.com · 24/08/2026

I am pretty much off Chrome except for a couple of very limited use cases, but look at this shit. Why in god's name would I need an AI to tell me what credit card I should use? Why would I hand over this extremely monetizable surveillance data -- what I spend my money on -- for no benefit?

Enable AI-based card recommendations on Autofill
When enabled, AI-based card recommendations will be offered on Autofill when at least two credit card suggestions are shown. – Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS

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