The Book of Fate: The Mystery of the Missing Masonry

The Book of Fate
Brad Meltzer
Grand Central Publishing, 2006


Have you ever gotten a few chapters into a book, put it down, picked it up again, finished it, and then wished you'd simply trusted your initial instinct instead of wasting that time? That describes my experience with this book to a "t." The Book of Fate has nothing to do with Freemasonry, in spite of what the front cover, back cover blurb, and author's note would all have you believe. The conspicuous Masonic compasses and square in the book's title serve only to fool the reader into thinking this is another Da Vinci Code or National Treasure.

In fact, it is a cockamamie political thriller whose cast of characters is almost as unbelievable as its byzantine plotting. There's President Leland Manning, who follows W in office; his wife, Dr. Lenore Manning; his aide, sometimes narrator Wes Holloway, who was shot by a ricochet during an assassination attempt leaving his face permanently scarred; the President's best friend Boyle, who was shot and killed during the same assassination attempt, only to turn up very alive eight years later; Wes' roommate Rogo, a traffic ticket attorney and devoted friend; Lisbeth Dodson, the gossip columnist who wants to be the next Woodward and Bernstein; and Nico Hadrian, a religious psychotic responsible for "assassinating Boyle" under the influence of a mysterious cabal called The Three.

Lest you suspect that "The Three" are Freemasons, thus explaining the cover and Masonic hoopla, you'd be wrong. Rather they are three top agents from the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service, who have been in cahoots to scam the government with expensive, phony intelligence. Somehow they connect to the assassination of Boyle, which was perpetrated by Nico because the Three easily convinced him that his father was (1) evil, (2) his mom's murderer, (3) a Freemason, and (4) conspiring with other Freemasons, such as the man he is to assassinate, Boyle. Nico's late father was, apparently, a Freemason (indicated by the secret tatoo of compass and squares on his ankle). But Boyle isn't a Freemason. The President isn't a Freemason. None of the Three are Freemasons. The plot doesn't revolve around a big Masonic secret. Instead Freemasonry was simply something that the Three associated (wrongly) with Nico's father and with Boyle in order to get Nico to pull the trigger for them. Make sense? No. Then you're following along nicely.

For the record, the book didn't totally suck. It was fun enough for an airplane or the beach, although the execrable plotting might induce headaches after one too many mojitos. Just don't expect it to make much sense and especially don't expect it to have anything to do with Freemasonry and you probably won't be too disappointed. How is that for damning with faint praise?

Works as both thriller and alternate history

Fatherland
Robert Harris
HarperTorch, 1993

What if Nazi Germany had won the European war? What would the world of the 1960s look like with an aging Führer still clutching the reigns of power? Those are the big questions that inform journalist and author Robert Harris' debut novel, a genuine page-turner about one German policeman's investigation of a routine corpse who turns out to be anything but routine.

I really enjoyed this novel on many levels. For one thing, it is a compelling thriller involving long-buried secrets, political assassinations, international intrigue, and Gestapo tactics and police state paranoia. The main protagonist, Sturmbahnnführer Xavier March, a surprisingly sympathetic SS officer-by-default whose loyalty to the Reich is far from perfect, finds himself drawn into a web of treachery involving a 20-year old secret that unknown parties will kill to protect.

Fatherland is also ingeniously crafted alternate history, in which Albert Speer's larger-than-life architectural visions for Nazi Berlin have been brought to fruition. Descriptions of the titanic Arch of Triumph (40 or so times bigger than the Parisian monument of the same name) and the thousand-foot tall Great Hall vied for my attention against chilling details about everyday life in a racist police state. And of course, there is that decades-old secret March unravels; it has something to do with obscure frontier towns called Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Dachau.

All in all, a well written debut novel that is well worth a read.

(This review was originally written on September 14, 2007.)

Staggeringly mediocre----why has this sold 1 copy for every 100 people on Earth?

The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown
Doubleday, 2003

Amazon reviewer Steven Reynolds summed it up nicely, but since I write these reviews primarily for my own benefit, I can't rely on his words to describe my experience.

So here are my words: a gruesome murder and its symbolic aftermath; a rock star of a Harvard symbologist who can't recognize the Star of David as two intersecting triangles; two-page chapters flying past, with every other chapter returning to our hero the rock star symbologist; 450 pages in two sessions of roughly 3 hours each; character development, what character development?; albino assassin working for Catholic conspirators, Priory of Sion conspirators, Templar conspirators; the Holy Grail; Mary Magadalene and Jesus; the exact same double-bluff tricks from Angels and Demons with bad guys as good guys as bad guys; and it all ends in such an unsatisfying way.

Perhaps I would be willing to give Dan Brown a free pass on this if this novel weren't so darned successful. I don't resent the success per se. Instead I despise the fact that this author has managed to stir up so much controversy (and so many revenues) without actually understanding the material he's writing about. For a novel that purports to be an intellectual tour de force, this book is filled with errors even a college freshman with Wikipedia could catch. (Example: Brown actually has a character assert that the name "YHWH" derives from the name "Jehovah," when in fact the reverse is the case.) Every time "Harrison Ford in tweed" discussed the mysterious organizations, themes, and locales that run throughout the book---whether Saint-Sulpice, Rosslyn Chapel, the Priory of Sion, etc.---my mind would scream out for someone on Langdon's dissertation commitee to call and revoke his degree. The Priory of Sion was exposed as a 20th century hoax, yet Brown insists on telling readers in his introductory "fact" note that this demonstrated forgery was a secret society founded in 1099. His characters, allegedly renowned scholars no less, recite their conspiracy theories like stoned undergraduates at a late night party shocking one another with earnestly repeated urban legends. After a while, the college stoner conspiracy crap lost its charm, and by the time the end of the book was approaching, I realized that the author had already shot his main goods in the chapter on Jesus and Mary Magdalene as lovers. THAT was the controversy that made this book sell. THAT was the real secret of the book, and not the farcical Grail that Langdon pursues until the very last page. Revealing to a world of Christians that their religion was bound up in the vagaries and contingencies of history, and that there are aspects to this religion that have been lost or hidden, made for controversy and good sales.

This could have been a much better book, even a great book, in the hands of a real writer and researcher. As it is, The Da Vinci Code is merely the scandalously popular and criminally overrated work of a mediocre, hamfisted hack.

(This review was originally written on March 13, 2007.)

If Tom Robbins wrote a Clancy novel under the influence of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Crying of Lot 49, & Silent Spring

Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller
Neal Stephenson
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988


He considers himself a "Toxic Spiderman," the media refer to him as the "Granola James Bond," and the blurb on the back of the book describes protagonist Sangamon Taylor as a "New Age Sam Spade." One thing he ain't, unfortunately, is a well-developed character with family, friends, etc. Amazingly enough, this lack of character development doesn't hurt the rollicking story one whit. In fact, from the first page, the reader is on a thrilling Zodiac ride around the toxic Boston Harbor, into which something a little nastier than tea is being dumped.

Add regular substance use (typically, but not always, following Sangamon's Principle that "the simpler the molecule, the better the drug"), a Satanic heavy metal band, a handful of bigwig corporate criminals, Taylor's penchant for the media-savvy "invironmintle" spectacle and noir-ish first person narration, and Stephenson's gift for brilliant one liners, and you get an intelligent, fun novel that somehow perfectly captures the transitional period of the late 1980s. Basically, think Tom Robbins writing a Tom Clancy novel under the influence of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Crying of Lot 49, and Silent Spring, and you'll still be way off, but close enough to enjoy the ride.

(This review was originally written on January 18, 2007.)