Pradeep Sebastian on the proliferation of religious conspiracy thrillers and why we like them
Between The Da Vinci Code and its long and much awaited follow up The Solomon Key there have been dozens of novels claiming to be the next big religious conspiracy thriller since Dan Brown's blockbuster. As a conspiracy buff I have sampled most of them, only to be disappointed again and again. Long after I realised most of them sucked, I couldn't resist trying the next thriller that promised to be the new Da Vinci Code. I suppose it is the hope that this new one will be everything the blurbs claim it is. There are only a handful of books that qualify as following in the footsteps of the DVC, and providing the kind of conspiracy frisson Brown did with his two Robert Langdon novels. But before I talk more about this author, I want to talk a little bit more about the nature of my disappointment with these theological thrillers.
Some are downright trashy (The 13th Apostle, The Gaudi Key, The Lost Temple), others are middling (The Brotherhood Of The Shroud, The Bible of Clay, The Secret Scroll) and a few others are actually sophisticated (The Secret Supper, Labyrinth, The Last Cato) And it is the last lot- the ones that are actually complex and finely written -that I want to focus a bit on. In terms of style, characterization, detail and depth Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper, Kate Mosse's Labyrinth and Matilde Asensi's The Last Cato are superior to Brown's rather functional thrillers. How then can one claim to be disappointed by them? It is precisely because they are dense and complex and too literary that they fail to be the exciting, provocative and unputdownable read The Da Vinci Code turned out to be.
Brown knew how to keep the religious secrets coming: the book unravels conspiracy after conspiracy in a prose that is serviceable but adequate. It keeps you turning the pages. The more literary thrillers take a long while to kick in-you have to read at least a 150 before they begin yielding their juicy secrets. If give up before this point - as many readers do - these finely textured thrillers feel inaccessible and not compelling enough. In a conspiracy thriller I want a clean, stripped to the bone prose and a plot that keeps the surprises coming. I don't want it to be good literature. I don't want it to be good pulp. I want it to be a good middlebrow thriller. That is, I want clever riddles, ingenious puzzles, curvy plot twists and tantalizing revelations. And, of course, a satisfactory conspiracy to make you comfortably paranoid!
It's just very possible that the only book that will really rival the DVC is Brown's latest work in progress: The Solomon Key.The book was scheduled to be released end of 2008 but has now been pushed back to a date as yet unknown. The book is now with Alfred Knopf, where Sonny Mehta is editor. Many in the publishing business are certain that if anyone can get Brown to cough up the sequel, it will be Mehta. Dan Burstein, the editor of Secrets of the Da Vinci Code, has already released his version of the secrets that The Solomon Key will contain. Titled Secrets of the Widow's Son, it looks at the nexus between Freemasons, the American constitution and the city of Washington D.C. There are even rumors that Brown may have dropped 'Solomon' out of the title because it resembles the titles of other recently published thrillers.
The three conspiracy yarns I can recommend are The Sacred Bones by Michael Byrne, The Last Secret Of The Temple by Paul Sussman and The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry. Some of you are nodding in recognition because you know the novels of Berry. My favourite of his books - and the one I think is a fair successor to DVC if not a very worthy one - is The Alexandria Link. Let me tell you straight off that it has nothing to do with Jesus or Mary Magdalene or even Christianity, but it is a political conspiracy thriller with a very potent plot.
The book offers two juicy plot premises. One imagines that the lost Library of Alexandria, destroyed now for 1,500 years, still exists. That a secret order of intrepid librarians called The Guardians copied or stole most of that famed library's scrolls and papyri (nearly half a million) before it burned down or disappeared. And now guard it with their life, passing secret membership from one generation to the next.
The more controversial premise has the potential to redraw the map of the Middle East. A Palestinian scholar has discovered that the land the right wing Israelis claim to be promised to them by Abraham and Moses lies not in what is Israel now but in Arabia. Berry provides convincing evidence to argue this and bases it on an actual scholar's work: the Lebanese scholar, Kamal Salibi. In the book, the actual evidence of this - the original map - lies in the secret library of Alexandria. Closer home is Ashwin Sanghi's The Rozabal Line, about a tomb in Kashmir which could be that of a man named Yusuf, or Jesus.
If you begin literally believing all these conspiracies the books won't be thrilling anymore. For a conspiracy to be truly tantalising, the connections, the threads, should never add up but hint at bigger conspiracies. Only then will the paranoia be real. The Da Vinci Code is proof that even more powerful than our craving for a good conspiracy is our desire to believe in one. Are conspiracies also a comfortable way of making sense of the world? Things don't just fall apart - somebody makes them fall apart. It stems from the notion that all of us experience on and off: that things are not what they seem to be. I read a fascinating definition of paranoia once (from where I can't simply remember now) as 'complete awareness'. Isn't that quite a revelation?
Personalities 
Between The Da Vinci Code and its long and much awaited follow up The Solomon Key there have been dozens of novels claiming to be the next big religious conspiracy thriller since Dan Brown's blockbuster. As a conspiracy buff I have sampled most of them, only to be disappointed again and again. Long after I realised most of them sucked, I couldn't resist trying the next thriller that promised to be the new Da Vinci Code. I suppose it is the hope that this new one will be everything the blurbs claim it is. There are only a handful of books that qualify as following in the footsteps of the DVC, and providing the kind of conspiracy frisson Brown did with his two Robert Langdon novels. But before I talk more about this author, I want to talk a little bit more about the nature of my disappointment with these theological thrillers..jpg)
Brown knew how to keep the religious secrets coming: the book unravels conspiracy after conspiracy in a prose that is serviceable but adequate. It keeps you turning the pages. The more literary thrillers take a long while to kick in-you have to read at least a 150 before they begin yielding their juicy secrets. If give up before this point - as many readers do - these finely textured thrillers feel inaccessible and not compelling enough. In a conspiracy thriller I want a clean, stripped to the bone prose and a plot that keeps the surprises coming. I don't want it to be good literature. I don't want it to be good pulp. I want it to be a good middlebrow thriller. That is, I want clever riddles, ingenious puzzles, curvy plot twists and tantalizing revelations. And, of course, a satisfactory conspiracy to make you comfortably paranoid!
The book offers two juicy plot premises. One imagines that the lost Library of Alexandria, destroyed now for 1,500 years, still exists. That a secret order of intrepid librarians called The Guardians copied or stole most of that famed library's scrolls and papyri (nearly half a million) before it burned down or disappeared. And now guard it with their life, passing secret membership from one generation to the next.
