11/06/07 Books

"The Fourth Order" Stephen Frey
A frightening story about an ultra secret government agency that was activated after 9/11 as an anti terrorist tool. This is the fourth time that "The Order of Immunity" formed after the assignation of president Lincoln has been made operational for the first time. The group, funded through a maze of corporations so no one can know where the money originates, headed by very high level government officials and soldiered by people with no moral scruples, are charged to route out terrorists without regard to due process. They can grab anyone they think might have information, they can detain, imprison, torture and kill anyone with complete immunity. They use their powers vigorously even though more than two thirds of the people they grab are innocent.
A Chief Financial officer of a multi billion dollar corporation is embarking on a hostile take over of a very technical computer service company. Hidden in this company is the operational apparatus of the Fourth Order and it’s sophisticated, world wide, computer spy system that can monitor all electronic and verbal communications giving the order nationwide and national surveillance ability. The powers in the Fourth Order do everything they can to try to stop this take over. The CFO and his family are placed in great jeopardy. The plot twists and turns; ruthless and evil people move in and out of the action. This is fiction but who really knows what kind of monsters we might really have doing hateful things in the guise of "protecting the people"? In this story they went much too far and it deteriorated to personal vendettas.


"The Flanders Panel" Arturo Perez-Reverte
Get your chess board out and set up your pieces to match the chess game in the painting called "The Game of Chess" by Pieter Van Huys in 1471. Julia, a painting restorer is working on this painting getting it ready for an auction when she discovers a message painted by the artist and hidden beneath a layer of paint. The message is rather cryptic; "Who Killed the Knight" in Latin. Julia is intrigued; the hidden message could increase the value of the painting considerably but more than that Julia is determined to find the meaning of the message. Research on the people who were portrayed in the painting showed that the two men playing chess and a woman who is watching the game had very interesting histories and one of the chess players was, actually, a knight. A master chess player is hired to analyze the game as it is set up in the painting to see if the chess game will yield clues to why the painter wrote the message. Was there, really, a murder? Who was murdered and by whom? Clues are unraveled as past and later moves are worked out by the chess master, move by move that can be followed on your own chess board.
Reverte has surrounded his mystery with interesting, self serving and colorful characters each of whom have an interest in the painting itself as it is made ready for an important art auction. Greed, murder,tense action and a couple of real surprises. Good read!!


"The Club Dumas" Arturo Perez-Reverte
An amazing, intelligently written, mystery and occult puzzle novel written by a favorite Spanish author. Books, writers, collectors and dealers in old and rare books are introduced into this story about a certain book dealer, Lucas Corso,an intense,cynical, chain smoking individual, who makes his living researching and finding and buying and selling books for a selected clientele. Lucas is hired to authenticate part of an original manuscript, some handwritten pages of "The Three Musketeers", written by Alexander Dumas ; Dumas was known to collaborate with others when he wrote his novels, hence the need for verification. As he goes about this task, he is engaged by a very wealthy collector, Varo Borja, to research a demonic book called "The Book of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows" supposedly authored by Lucifer himself. The book is supposed to enable the owner, if he can figure out the puzzles, to meet the Devil and become all powerful. There are only three such volumes in existence and Corso is charged to examine each one in order to assure Borja that the one he has is genuine; he suspects it might be a forgery. (Perhaps, Borja tried to meet the Devil and the ritual did not work) Corso finds himself involved in a very complicated plot where he meets people that seem, to him, to resemble the main characters from the "Three Musketeers", a sensuous woman, the wife of the previous owner of the manuscript, that he identifies as Milady De Winter and a man who is a companion of the woman he thinks of as Rocheforte.
At the same time, as he begins to compare the second of the Book of the Nine Gates, he discovers that while the binding, the paper and the print are identical, there are slight differences in the nine prints. He also discovers that some of the prints were originated by the publisher and others were originated by another person "LCF" (Lucifer?). Corso is followed and threatened by the person he thinks of as Rocheforte but each time he is in danger, he is rescued by a strange young girl who is following him. As the story progresses, death and destruction of their libraries come to the two other owners of the Book of Nine Gates; the books are destroyed in fire but the prints were removed prior to burning the books. Corso finds himself in the middle of a twisting plot that involves devil worship, occult practices and a secret organization of Alexander Dumas' fanatical admirers.
This was a fascinating novel; the plot was complex and the climax was interesting and throughout the book there were lively discussions between Corso and book dealers and book collectors where literally hundreds of novels and author’s works were discussed or quoted from and great care was taken in the story to show the sources that Corso and others used as they researched both the manuscript and the occult book. The book discussions and the quotations scattered throughout the story were extremely well done.
This novel was adapted into a film by Roman Polanski. Johnny Depp played Corso in this dark and exciting movie called "The Ninth Gate". Get the DVD; Johnny Depp's portrayal of Corso was exact and excellent.