I read this book three months ago, but I’ve been waiting to highlight it because I wanted to see what my wife thinks of it:

J. Wallace Warner. Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels. Colorado Springs, CO: Cook, 2013.

Jenni recently listened to the audiobook, and we agree:

1. This is an edifying book with a creative, engaging angle.
2. The first half is far more engaging than the second half. (I carefully read the first half but ended up skimming the second half.)

We enjoy listening to detective stories (e.g., here and here), and Warner fills the first half of the book with interesting stories that illustrate how to investigate what other people claim to be true.

The author has been a detective for nearly 25 years, and he earned a master’s degree in theology from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

What initially caught my eye are the glowing endorsements from people like Greg Koukl and J. P. Moreland and the foreword by Lee Strobel.

The book lands squarely in the “evidentialism” camp of apologetics as opposed to presuppositionalism. I’m a presuppositionalist (I’m very sympathetic with John Frame’s approach, and I’ve heard that Scott Oliphint’s forthcoming book will become the new standard work on presuppositionalism), but I still see value in a book like Cold-Case Christianity (see Don Carson on Presuppositional vs. Evidentialist Apologetics — and note the resources at the end of that post). So I think that some reviews (like this one) are too harsh; Mark Ward’s critique is more judicious.