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A prolific author, Klein has produced a dazzling new work of fiction with a Jungian slant. In this story, a couple of college students in Vermont clearly get in over their heads with a discovery they make in their library via a secret passage. The author's characters come alive with vivid gestures and spicy dialogue. The atmosphere and suspense are built carefully, and the reader is made to feel part of the adventures through creepy, oddly lit, and bad-smelling places.
Time ticks by, dreams seem prescient, memories start slipping, and the library casts a spell of its own. A college president dies, mystifying a detective. Alchemy and sorcery extend through medieval rituals to haunt the present, even requiring trips to psychiatrists. Financial markets are predicted, and vast sums of money are made, but danger is unleashed. Bones and blood enter the picture. A discovered code goes awry, and skulls and the stations of the cross are thrown into the mix. Resources and solutions become necessary.
If readers want an adventure requiring a romp through history, they should look no further. The curious, dogged, and slightly OCD students find answers in books about monks, ceremonies, and sites that once forbid women. Oddness leaps off the page, as exploring fingers do, scanning for evidence of what it is they pursue. Are the monks mining gold around a monastery? It seems like a crazy story, but many readers are bound to be very engaged as they vicariously experience the gripping and entertaining connections between the characters as they search out paths directed by sparsely indicated clues.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review