The Invisible Empire

Jean Free, a library consultant, was an elementary-school teacher and
librarian in Whitby, Ontario.

“Those who believed in the cult [the Church of Balthazar] did so
because, for them, the Church was a new family, a straw they could grasp
on to.” So Nicholas Saint-Laurent learns as he tries to solve the
murder, outside the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, of musician John
Goodman. Saint-Laurent goes on to infiltrate the “Invisible Empire,”
made up of “soldiers of the Cosmic Essences” trying to kill all
“the Androgynes, those monstrous beings, inhuman, who are neither true
men nor true women, despite their normal appearance.”

Translated from the French L’invisible puissance, the novel’s
ingredients should appeal to students at the elementary and secondary
levels: references to music, parallels to John Lennon and the Beatles,
and homosexuality.

Readers come to understand the brainwashing and the bizarre fellowship
of cults and gangs, and how easily young people can become part of them.
The Invisible Empire is short, fast-paced, and relevant.