Katherine Neville, once a vice president of Bank of America and
author of the international bestseller The Eight, returns
to the mainstream thriller scene with a novel marrying
historical fiction and modern-day suspense. The Magic Circle
jumps (mostly) between the Holy Land, the Roman Empire and Great Britain
around the time of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and the U.S., Russia and
Europe in the late 1980s. Ancient relics of power, encryptions, and
prophecies add up to a Pandora's box waiting to be opened by one young
woman as she discovers the secrets and lies that have fractured her
family for generations.
Ariel
Behn, daughter of a hard-drinking diva and a coldly distant
businessman, is a carefree "girl nuke," working at a nuclear security and
regulation site in the mountainous U.S. West. Born into a clan with
an undiagrammable family tree, she's never been truly close to any of
her relatives except for her "blood brother" Sam, who was the son of her
father's brother (and mother's husband). Ariel's dysfunctional familial
relationships take on sinister overtones beginning from the day of Sam's
funeral in San Francisco.
Ariel hasn't seen Sam in years; the last time she spoke with him,
he hinted at being in the employ of a multi-governmental organization.
Reported dead from a car-bomb detonation, Sam has, to Ariel's surprise,
made her sole executor of his estate. What all her far-flung and
emotionally distant relations are suddenly extremely interested in is
one part of Sam's estate: manuscripts left to him by their grandmother
Pandora. Ariel quickly discovers that Sam is not dead but in hiding,
and that both of their lives are in grave danger because of these cryptic
papers and the secrets held within. Ariel must trust no one; everyone
is suspect -- her "Jack" Mormon landlord and co-worker Olivier; her own
father; and especially the devastatingly handsome German "nuke" who she's
assigned to accompany on a fact-finding mission to the former Soviet
Union.
Ariel's family members start crawling out of the woodwork, all eager
to warn and assist her in her struggle to decipher the importance and
meaning of Pandora's manuscripts. She narrowly escapes with her life
several times in trying to guard her knowledge of the existence and whereabouts of Sam and the
coded manuscripts. Perhaps most perilously of all, she finds herself
falling deeply in love -- or at least lust -- with Wolfgang Hauser, her
new nuclear-investigation partner. As her family's knotted
interrelations start untangling for her, a horrifying bond with one of
the world's most infamous madmen is revealed, making all the more
dangerous and vital Ariel's attempts to decipher her cryptic inheritance.
The most enjoyable chapters of The Magic Circle involve
characters at the time of and following Christ's death. Corrupt Caesars,
enigmatic Druids, and Jesus' friends and followers are the most colorful
in the novel. The connections between ancient times and Ariel's modern
drama are forced; the great mystery of the manuscripts and the ultimate
truths to be revealed by their decryption are left unsolved and unspoken,
both in the stories of the ancients and of Ariel and her sprawling,
libidinous and secretive family. But with intriguing peeks into Christ's
world, Hitler's obsessions, and well-turned chapter-break quotes from
numerous sources, The Magic Circle will especially delight
those who can't resist ancient prophecies or any theory involving conspiracy.