A brass cross is stolen from the altar of a small Episcopal church on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The theft makes the papers and gives the rector, Father Thomas Pemberton, his 15 minutes of fame. Eventually, it turns up in an odd place: the roof of the Synagogue of Evolutionary Judaism on the Upper West Side. How did it get there, and why?
This small urban mystery strikes the opening chord of E.L. Doctorow's dazzling, polyphonic new novel City of God (Random House; 320 pages; $25). But detective work, at least of the sort usually portrayed in fiction, is...
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