The high tide of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code
has lifted many boats, and one of them is the research of Picknett and Prince, self-styled writers on "the paranormal, the occult, and historical mysteries." Authors of The Templar Revelation
, a book that helped inspire Brown's novel of hidden descendants of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, Picknett and Prince return to these enticing themes of secrets, treasures, heresy and backroom power brokering with a closer look at the Priory of Sion. In this book, they argue that the Priory is a hoax, but one that is carefully designed in the manner of misinformation leaked by intelligence agencies to achieve specific goals. Behind the hoax, they say, is a network of European esoteric societies driven by the principle of "synarchy" and influencing the coalescence of the European Union, perhaps at the expense of democracy. Like their many other books, this one is cluttered with historical minutiae and sources of varying credibility. Skeptics will shake their heads over this next conspiracy theory, but for Da Vinci Code
fans hungry for additional digging behind the fiction, this will be a dense but satisfying read. (Feb. 7)
