Krishna
I know what the author is aiming for, but let us discuss this later, once we have had a peek at the story. What is the story?
The story opens with Father Pascal Cambriel in a storm in France. A man dressed in rags slashes himself, after spouting Spanish.
Julian Sanchez, a boy kidnapped for ransom by wealthy parents, is discovered in a dirty hovel by super sleuth Ben Hope. That is purely to serve as introduction to him and his prowess. The story starts when Ben is recruited by a rich man, for what?
Before we go on, this is the first book in a series that centres around Ben Hope written by the author.
Ben discovers that it is to find a man only known as Fulcanelli. The man who hired him is Sebastian Fairfax, through his assistant Valliers. That man Fucanelli was eighty when last seen, about eighty years ago!
Ben is followed by a man who, when cornered chooses to kill himself rather than be interrogated. This after a James Bond type of fight that requires all Ben’s skill to survive and subdue.
Interesting vignettes about the secret societies and how symbols can be interpreted in ways the original author never intended. This is where you begin to realize that this is intended as a thriller in the style of Dan Brown’s books.
Then the book goes into an action thriller mode, where Ben meets Roberta a discredited scientist whom a killer tries to kill, whose assistant betrays all her research. They team up to meet an old relative (descendant) of Fulcanelli and buy an old manuscript from him.
He gives them a book but not the manuscript but gets captured by the evil priest who is a religious sadist.
Then they meet the beautiful Anna Manzini and also the demented man who was saved by a priest and also met Anna in an asylum and was killed by Eduourd, who himself is killled by the evil priest. Does your head spin yet?
Very cartoony and definitely not Dan Brown. I would not even call it a poor man’s Dan Brown.
In the end there are multiple twists in the style of Jeffrey Deaver, briefly holding your interest but even these are not well executed.
The dialog is insipid, all the emotions are surface emotions or reflective of adolescent thought processes, nothing complex here to savor.
You do not feel for anyone, do not think like anyone do not experience what they do. Just a story. Not a very good one at that either. A little entertaining.
Let us say 2/10
– – Krishna