The plot in a nutshell: In Ockham's Razor, Ari Mackenzie controversial analyst at General Intelligence, a specialist in sects, goes in search of the organization who murdered a close friend of his father, Paul Cazo, a architect and several other people in particularly atrocious conditions. He soon realizes that the murders are related to missing sheets of books Villard, a master builder of the XII century. The plot full of twists and action scenes are well done and arrive breathless at the two fateful words of the late first novel: "TO BE CONTINUED ..." So Cathedrals vacuum pick up where Ari was stopped by adding books to Villard a manuscript of Nicolas Flamel, bourgeois XIV century that will finally decipher the true meaning of Villard sheets.
It is quite ironic that Henry Loevenbruck evokes themes and symbols that are the subject of the latest Dan Brown (The Lost Symbol) as the myth of the hollow earth and Masonic symbols, even though the hero seems to castigate Loevenbruck methods of American bestselling author:
"Ari knew too well what kind of individuals whose wacky From Umberto Eco played in the dubbing diabolical. - Because if errare humanum is, however, persevare diabolicum - these fanatics for whom everything had a hidden meaning, esoteric, and saw on every street corner signs of a higher-up, an ancestral plot to disproportionate ramifications. These clowns had to mania multiply indefinitely smokers explanations, link together causes yet irreconcilable, to make demonstrations based on absurd analogies inconsistent with the sole result of completely losing anyone trying to find their speech any consistency. The kind of guy that can say without laughing, that there is a secret bond and capital between Mary Magdalene, the Merovingian, the Templars, the Freemasons, the rosi-cruciens, Poussin, Francis Bacon, Adolf Hitler and a priest of the early twentieth century in a small village in the Languedoc ... "
In the end, two novels which together form a whole that will delight lovers of esoteric plot.
A board, download visual guides on solvedcases.free.fr two novels: they illustrate the tables, places, sculptures and symbols mentioned in the novel under relevant extracts of which - I hope - a bit enrich your reading !