You’d never think there would be a subgenre as specific as religious spy thrillers, or possibly “men of the cloth with guns” but this book follow the time-honored tradition of books like Eco’s Name of the Rose and more popular novels by David Morrell. It also has an intriguing code aspect and a very alluring history aspect. Plus, even more tantalizingly, it includes a very short preface entitled fact which lets you know that a large amount of detail in the book is, in fact, true.

In retrospect, an interesting thing about the story in this book -- which covers topics such as the templars, the Holy grail, the fate of Mary Magdalene and the status of Victor Hugo among other things -- is that the entire central plot of the book takes place over less than 24 hours, starting from the moment the museum curator is shot to the final resolution the next afternoon. Additionally despite the fact that the book is chock full of historical tidbits, it doesn’t feel heavy. The raw facts never overshadow the central characters and the plot moves ahead speedily. Though the book only took a day to read, I could understand what all the fuss was about and I will now return it to the amazingly overlong hold queue at my public library.