Part I
It was a dark and stormy night. The world-famous WW2 codebreaker furiously twiddled his moustache. Suddenly, a shout – “I’ve solved the Voynich!” It was the television! A small boy and his beagle were smiling at the camera, holding a book up. They had “proved it was a hoax”. This meant one thing: war! The codebreaker slammed the door and drove to the library.

Part II
Seven hundred years earlier, Knights Templar pounded the monastery door. Roger Bacon answered. “We’ll taketh that”, said the knights, grabbing the mysterious book from his hands. “My secrets are safe with you idiots”, sneered the codemaker monk.

Part III
The security guard approached. The codebreaker was in his pyjamas, waiting at the library’s front gate. “You’ll have to wait till morning, sir”, said the guard. A shot rang out. The guard slumped. The codebreaker hid the body in a snowdrift. The history graduate walked warily past the man in bloodstained pyjamas on her way home. The boy on TV carried on smiling.

Part IV
The Knights Templar couldn’t decipher the book. “Torture him!”, the Grand Master screamed. They tried, but Bacon had a heart attack and died. Nobody would ever know. Or would they? And then the whole Templar Order was suppressed. Or was it?

Part V
The gate opened, and the codebreaker ran in past the history graduate, again. The librarian shrugged. But where was the security guard? The codebreaker sped through all the pages one last time, until – yes, there it was! A bloody fingerprint, overlooked by everyone. It wasn’t a hoax! Outside, the librarian noticed the trail of blood and called the police. The dog smiled even harder.

Part VI
Leon Battista Alberti borrowed the book from the Vatican, his oily fingerprints messing up the radiocarbon dating. Suddenly, a thud! Alberti lay unconscious in the street, mugged: the thief ran away with his prize, for his great-grandchildren to sell to the Holy Roman Emperor, and from there to Athanasius Kircher in 1665, the Jesuit archives, and then Wilfrid Voynich in 1912.

Part VII
Bang! The codebreaker lay shot, slumped by the book, his vividly red blood mingling with the ink, the paint and the blood spatter from Alberti’s head. His life ebbing away, he suddenly realized: nobody would ever know. They’d all think it simply a hoax, forever. He lifted his hands to the sky and shouted “Noooooooo!” The boy and the dog danced on top of the kennel, one last time.

THE END

The Daily Grail has today’s hot cipher history story: that Dan Brown’s soon-to-be-released novel “Inferno” is somehow based around the Voynich Manuscript. Apparently, the proof of this particular pudding is, well, a cipher, one apparently hidden in plain sight on Brown’s website:-

dan-brown-voynich-code

In Rolf Harris’ immortal phrase, “Can you tell what it is yet?” I hope you can, because all it is is… a 4×4 transposition cipher of “MS 408 YALE LIBRARY”. Yes, that’s it. Which is in itself a fairly underwhelming starting point, considering that the Voynich Manuscript isn’t MS 408 in “Yale Library”, but in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. But (of course) that wouldn’t fit in 16 letters. 🙂

So, the story of the story is that Dan Brown will once again be wheeling out his “symbologist” Robert Langdon in a Renaissance-art-history-conspiracy-somehow-impinges-on-the-present-day-with-terrible-consequences schtick, but this time in Florence with Dante’s “Inferno” right at the heart of it (hence the title), with only the poor, much-abused Voynich Manuscript for company.

One part I’m not looking forward to is what Brown will have Robert Langdon make of the Voynich: for of all the mysteries I’ve ever seen, the Voynich is surely the least obviously symbol-laden. There’s no “sacred geometry” there, no gematria, no heresy, in fact no religion at all: just about all you could do is tie in the Voynich ‘nymphs’ with the same kind of alt.history “goddess” thing that Brown tried to stripmine in The Da Vinci Code… but all the same, that looks fairly hollow to me. I guess we’ll have to see what angle he does take… at least we won’t have long to wait (14th May 2013).

For me, the central contrast between Dante’s Inferno and the Voynich Manuscript is that they are diametrically opposite in referentiality: while the Inferno (and in fact the whole Divine Comedy) reaches out to touch and even include all of human culture, the Voynich Manuscript’s author seems to have worked with the same kind of monastic intensity to ensure it appears to refer to nothing at all. So, when Dan Brown collides the everything-book with the nothing-book, what kind of po-faced bathos-fest are we in for?

As an aside, I don’t see any numerology in the (original) Inferno: and considering the amount of effort Dante put into satirizing astrologers, alchemists, politicians, liars, frauds and the like in their aptly tortured circles of hell, I’m reasonably sure he’d mete out the same kind of punishment to numerologists. And probably to symbologists, too. And (if we’re lucky) to bad novelists… though you’ll have to put your own candidates forward for that, I’m far too polite. 😉

However, the bit I dread most is when people start to realize that Dante Alighieri’s Inferno was only the first part (of three) of his Divine Comedy: and with the current Hollywood craze for trilogies (The Hobbit trilogy, really?), what are the odds Dan Brown will extend any success with this book out into his own money$pinning Dante-based series, hmmm? The “Ka’chingferno” three-parter, no less!

Update: Erni Lillie upbraids me (and rightly so) in a comment here for omitting to mention his substantial 2004 (though the Wayback Machine only has a copy from 2007) Voynich Inferno essay, where he proposed that the nine “rosettes” on the Voynich Manuscript’s nine-rosette page might well represent the nine layers of Dante’s Inferno. My own experience of working on that particular page would place it closer to Purgatory, but perhaps we’re closer than medieval theologians would have it. 🙂

Truth be told, I did remember that I had forgotten something to do with Dante and the Voynich, but couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was I’d forgotten. And now that I’ve found it again, I was delighted to read it all over again, Renaissance warts and all. So, hoping that it’s OK with Erni to bring his work to a new generation of interested readers, here’s a link to a copy of his paper The Voynich Manuscript as an Illustrated Commentary of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Maybe it will turn out to be what Dan Brown’s new book plagiarizes was amply inspired by this time round, who knows? 😉

Personally, I suspect the smart money is indeed on Brown’s having the Voynich’s nine-rosette map turn out to be a map: with the devastating twist *yawn* that it actually represents a physical map of Dante-related locations in Florence, which Robert Langdon is then able to decode at speed thanks to his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things symbolic and Florentine, which ultimately leads him to the dark secret at the heart of a centuries-old conspiracy which he and his unexpected accomplice must choose whether to reveal to the horror of the world.

You know, basically the same as all his other books. 😉

Anyway, looking forward to the launch party at the Duomo, darling. Of course I’d like more olives, thanks for asking, and isn’t the San Giovese simply, errrm, Divine? 🙂

I read Robin Wasserman’s Voynich-themed young adult novel ages ago but never got round to reviewing it here…

Curiously, though, it has to be said that the Voynich Manuscript itself only ends up playing a relatively small part in the overall story: ultimately, most of the action revolves around the discovery & translation of a series of (fictional) letters to or from (the very real) Elizabeth Weston, Edward Kelley’s literary poetess stepdaughter, each of which gradually reveals details that move the teen gothic plot towards its nicely horrific conclusion.

In the modern novelistic style, Wasserman has the various ancient artefacts protected and sought (respectively) by a Conspiracy of Basically-Good and a Conspiracy of Basically-Evil: the teen novel conceit is that despite the ridiculously amplified level of peril surrounding the main character, she tends to trust wholeheartedly pretty much any drop-dead-gorgeous young hunk (from either conspiracy) who asks her to do anything.

From a Voynich researcher’s point of view, the good stuff about this novel is that it foregrounds a lot of the gritty historical stuff that people tend not to think about much – transcription, translation, cross-referencing, etc. Yet the bad stuff about it is that the way it mythologizes Europe and romanticizes Latin translation makes it feel like it was written for Lisa Simpson – several times I imagined Lisa clutching the book to her heart and exclaiming “She didn’t dumb it down for me!” (not unlike the “Mother Simpson” episode with Glenn Close).

The book was clearly not written with me in mind, so I don’t really want to dwell too much on its nitty gritty: but even so, I get the impression it would make a very much better teen film than a book. In short: one to option rather than to read! 😉

Does the world need yet more Voynich Manuscript-themes novels? Errrrm… obviously it does, or else why would so many of them be parachuting down out of a clear blue sky?

First up in today’s list is H. L. Dennis’ “Secret Breakers: The Power of Three”. Even though this is a kid’s book, between you and me it’s actually a jolly good read, with lots of Bletchley-Park-Station-X and mint-imperial-crunching-British-code-breaker stuff threaded throughout it, like so much Csjhiupo Spdl. My 8-year-old son enjoyed it so much that he’ll be posting a review of it here soon. All you need to know for now is that the ending sets up book two with Edward Elgar: so, Dorabella here we come! 😉

Next up is Linda Lafferty’s “The Bloodletter’s Daughter” – this 480-page heft weaves the Voynich Manuscript’s threads in with the even more obscure (and, actually, far bloodier) story of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II’s mad son Don Julius. There’s a copy right beside my desk waiting to be read… I just wish I didn’t have so much actual cipher research to do at the moment. But I promise I’ll get there (eventually)… oh well!

Finally, R. J. Scott’s “Book Of Secrets – Oracle 2” is due for release at the end of the month, though I get the feeling that it may not make a lot of sense unless you’ve already read the first book (“Oracle”).

Enjoy! @-) <--- belated Wenlock smiley 😉

While accidentally reading John Grisham’s “Theodore Boone” the other day, what struck me the most was the sheer laziness of the characterization. In particular, Boone’s uncle came across to me a paint-by-numbers Donald Sutherland part – the whole failed-lawyer-looking-for-redemption-through-a-younger-man’s-action thing, if you remember Time To Kill. Kind of set my teeth on edge right from near the start: not good, not good at all.

Similarly, the moment that the female lead in Russell Blake’s The Voynich Cypher appears wearing a “skin-tight black jumpsuit crafted from suede that left little to the imagination and calf-height black leather boots boasting four-inch heels” was the precise moment that the author left me behind. It’s not exaggerated, it’s not comic, it’s just lame, big-stylee. It’s not even Angelina Jolie (who would be too tall for the part).

Don’t get me wrong, I like independent writing and independent publishing: but there’s only so heavy a storm of genre clichés I can weather before I just want to shut the door on the lot of them. And on those terms, this was a perfect storm.

Yet even though other writers seem hugely comfortable with The Good Conspiracy Vs The Bad Conspiracy plot structure virtually all such modern cipher thrillers seem to roll out, here it’s handled without much finesse. In fact, if I were to say that it came across to me as a kind of Poundland remake of The Da Vinci Code with the Voynich Manuscript spliced in awkwardly, rest assured that that wouldn’t be giving away the plot.

As far as the writing goes, only one line stands out in the whole book (a bakery-related semi-gag on p.230, *sigh*), which quickly turns out to be no more than a clumsy artifice for introducing the young-sexy-woman-gets-it-on-with-the-older-man-despite-their-daunting-age-gap cliché. How many times have I read that? More to the point, how many more times will I have to endure it?

Sure, you might possibly like The Voynich Cypher, it’s certainly a quick’n’easy read… but personally, I just didn’t get it. Then again, I thought Fifty Shades of Whatever was, ummm, pants, so what do I know? 🙂

Greetings, most dearly beloved [insert-name-here],

I bring you a message of great urgency and yet colossal financial benefit. My name is Seko Mugu Alberti, and thanks to ancestry.com I have discovered that I am the sole descendant of Renaissance polymath genius Leon Battista Alberti. This means I am in line to inherit the architectural and consulting fortune he deposited at the Medici Bank long ago. Yes, I do believe I was indeed just as surprised to find this out as you are now.

Through close reading of my ancestor’s published works, I have discovered that he kept a copy of his bank account details hidden in plain sight. All I now need to do is present the proper authentication to the modern successors of the Medici Bank (the Rothschilds, of course) and they will be compelled to give me my rightful inheritance of (with compound interest) 48.9 billion US dollars.

As a result I have been looking for an exceptional historian and code-breaker to assist me – for a modest 15% finder’s fee – in deciphering Alberti’s greatest work, the Voynich Manuscript. (I wasted a lot of time on the disgusting and perverted Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, and the less said about that monstrosity the better). The nice gentleman at Cipher Mysteries sold me a list of mugus cipher researchers for a thousand US dollars “to put behind the bar in Frascati” (whatever that means), which is how I now find myself with your most excellent contact details.

The ridiculous Voynich Manuscript is, as I am sure you have already worked out, 240 pages of nonsense constructed with the sole purpose of concealing and disguising Alberti’s bank account details. Sadly, when I contacted Rothschilds with the important passphrase “qokedy qokedy dal qokedy qokedy” to identify myself, the teller refused to hand over even 100 dollars of my staggeringly large inheritance. I tell you, it is a shameful and degrading thing to be escorted from a bank building at gunpoint when you have committed no crime, no crime at all.

So you see, the fate of my inheritance is now in your hands. Research, research, research it! Find my ancestor’s hidden number or identification phrase, and you and I will be rich beyond all Renaissance dreams!

I remain your excellent friend and accomplice in research,
— Seko Mugu Alberti

The relatively low level of interest in the Voynich Manuscript in Italy has long puzzled me, when to my eyes (and plenty of other people’s eyes too), it looks to be an artefact grounded in some obscure byway of Italian Quattrocento culture. Perhaps they’re just too busy worrying about the economy or where they’ll find a Prime Ministerial ego extraordinary enough to replace Berlusconi’s to really be that bothered about the Voynich’s centenary this year?

Anyway, I’ve just had a nice email from Anna Castriota telling me about a new Italian Voynich novel she recently stumbled upon by the name of “I Custodi Della Pergamena Proibita” (The Keeper of the Forbidden Parchment), allegedly written by a priest pseudonymously calling himself Aldo Gritti.

As is grimly conventional for this kind of thing, Gritti’s grittily gritty story kicks off with three near-simultaneous murders in Florence, London and New Haven, where (surprise, surprise) “the victims were about to reveal to the world the true, shocking content of the dark Voynich manuscript, which for a century had resisted every attempt to interpret it. But [Inspector Elda Novelli] will be able to decrypt it by following the tracks left by the three dead researchers“.

Apparently Gritti’s story features not only the Titanic and the secrets behind several notable deaths of the early 20th century, but also the final revelation of the Voynich’s real-life secrets, hidden there by, dan dan daaah, Wilfrid Voynich himself. [SFX: Rizzoli’s PR people chortling into their hands] *sigh*

Well… if Gritti’s tiramisu of tragedy didn’t tweak your tarpaulins tighter, here’s another one to curdle your Kindle. “Voynich: Il Segreto Del Barabba (il più grande segreto su Gesù)” by Barbara Cesa wraps a Voynich Manuscript story around a three-chord eternal-guardians-of-the-heretical-secret Barabbas-twin-brother-of-Jesus murderous-conspiracy-brotherhood plot. You can also buy the first ten chapters for 0.92 euros (it says here), though doubtless you’ll then be so eager for The Big Plot Twist at the end that you’ll gladly pay the balance to Find Out What Happens At The End.

Regular Cipher Mysteries readers will already know how I feel: that there’s a corner of my soul that seems to die a little whenever I read yet another dismal Voynich novel plot summary, as if I’m using up one of my spare Chrestomanci lives. One day, though, I’m sure I’ll read a truly great Voynich novel, that will make all this treacle-swimming retrospectively worthwhile…

I can dream, can’t I? 🙂

A few days ago, I hurried my seven year old son to the back door to see a crowd of twenty or more crows spectacularly circling and cawing furiously at a pair of magpies who had presumably transgressed some unwritten bird law. Of course, though, the correct collective noun isn’t a ‘crowd’, but (rather delightfully) a ‘murder‘ of crows.

What, I wonder then, would be the right collective term for a set of Voynich novels? Though I’ve settled for “an obfuscation” here, doubtless you’ll have your own ideas. 🙂

Anyway, here are five relatively new Voynich novels I’ve been meaning to mention to you for a short while…

* (2011) The Cadence of Gypsies – Barbara Casey

“On her 18th birthday Carolina Lovel learned that she was adopted and was given a letter written in an unknown language left to her by her birth mother. After years of research she travels to Italy on a mission to find the truth about her past.”

* (2012) The Book of Blood & Shadow – Robin Wasserman

“Desperate to prove [her boyfriend Max’s] innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine…”

* (2012) Vaults of Power – Diane Echer

“When her twin is kidnapped in Southern France, Robyn Gabriel has six days to steal the precious Voynich manuscript from a bunker-like library at Yale University and break its code– […] The Federal Reserve can’t allow that. Now, they want her dead.”

* (2011) In a Celandine World – Catherine Thorpe

“The truth is going to come out. A truth that has long been forgotten. A truth that was concealed in a manuscript in the 12th century. An impossible truth. A dangerous truth that will blow Willow’s secret wide open—leaving her scrambling to save the only man she could ever love.”

* (2012?) The Voynich Cypher – Russell Blake [announced but not yet released]

“When a sacred relic is stolen from its subterranean guarded vault, Dr. Steven Cross, amateur cryptologist living in Tuscany, becomes embroiled in a deadly quest to decipher one of history’s most enigmatic documents…”

I already have the first two to read & review, though I must confess I’m finding it difficult to get into the Cadence of Gypsies, possibly because it’s aimed at a Teen / Young Adult audience. Oh well – I’ll let you know how I get on. Wish me luck! 🙂

Incidentally, I just noticed that the ebook version of In a Celandine World is free at SmashWords until February 15th 2012, so if you’d like to be entertained by Catherine Thorpe’s Victorian Knot-garden-inspired time-shifting paranormal Voynich romance, feel just as free to click on the link! 🙂

[Here are links to chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Enjoy!]

* * * * * * *

The crew were spending the rest of the day on those interminable fly-past shots of the Voynich Manuscript all modern documentary editors demand, their rostrum camera a microlight buzzing across a lightly-inked vellum landscape. But Marina Lyonne would be interviewing Mrs Kurtz tomorrow morning, which was when the real fun would begin.

Graydon shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking sideways at Emm. “So… dare I ask why Mrs Kurtz is so bothered?”, he asked.

“It’s more than just her”, Emm explained, “it’s all the curators. On the one hand, they completely grasp that while the Voynich is ‘Beinecke MS 408’, they’ll never truly be free of the alien artefact, Knights Templar & Rennes-le-Chateau nutjobs.”

“Yeah”, he said, “they do go with the territory, I guess.”

“OK: but on the other hand it’s the hoax theorist academics who annoy them much more. To the curators, whatever the Voynich turns out to be, it’s still a genuinely old historical object: so those hoaxologists ought to know better than to treat it as some kind of postmodernist joke. Which is why the Beinecke tried hard to shut its metal and glass front doors to the French film makers.”

“So, they then – let me guess – brought on board the impeccably-connected Marina…”

“…who managed to pull some stratospherically high-up strings within Yale, right. Et puis“, Emm continued, gesturing expansively in the general direction of the film crew downstairs, “voici tout le monde. Still, none of that means the curators appreciate being powerplayed by her… or, indeed, that they will necessarily play boules.”

“So”, mused Graydon scratching his head, “my job now is to give Mrs Kurtz plenty of powerful petards to place under the whole hoax argument. I’m happy to do my best: I just wish I knew what would give the biggest bang.”

He stood up slowly, pausing as the scale of the challenge hove slowly into view. How on earth could he prove that it wasn’t a hoax? Given the pervasive fog of uncertainty that surrounds nearly aspect of the Voynich, how can anyone prove anything about it at all?

“Perhaps we should start with the dating evidence?”, suggested Emm: she took notes as Graydon patiently went through the early 15th century radiocarbon dating, the mid-15th century parallel hatching, the late-15th century quire numbers, the 14th century hunting crossbow, and the mid 14th to early 15th century Savoy-like marginalia handwriting. They all told much the same story: the Voynich was an object rooted in 14th and 15th century ideas, but written on early 15th century vellum.

Emm shook her head. “Marina’s bound to point to the disparities between the dates. Surely a 16th century hoaxer making something mysteriously old-looking would just copy lots of plausible bits onto old vellum?”

“It’s not really like that”, said Graydon. “None of these dates are exact, not even the radiocarbon dating. Yet they come from such different directions – radiocarbon, Art History, palaeography, history of science. A hoaxer would need a very much more multimedia notion of what it means to be old than was in play during the 16th century. Piece all those fragments together, and an overall story does emerge: it’s just that it’s not a 16th century story. Hence we can basically rule out John Dee and Edward Kelly as authors.”

“Oooh, your ex-wife definitely won’t like that“, smiled Emm. “But I don’t think it’s going to be enough to sink her ship. What about the cryptography – can you prove it’s a cipher?”

Graydon’s face dropped. “Really, that’s what’s been bothering me for the last couple of years or so – it’s why my PhD has taken so long. Pass those new scans, let’s see what Mrs Kurtz has got for me…”

The first one was something he’d asked for five years ago: multispectral scans of the “michiton oladabas” marginalia, highlighting the different inks used. Mapping iron, carbon and phosphorus to red, green and blue, the page came alive with layered detail, laying out what was clearly… a tangled, gritty mess.

“Oh no“, he groaned, “we don’t have anything like the weeks it would take to sort this out. But at least the ‘nichil obstat‘ part is reasonably clear now.”

Emm shrugged blankly. “Which means…?”

“…’that it contains nothing contrary to faith or morals’. Essentially, it would seem that a 15th century church censor – possibly a bishop – has examined the manuscript and decided that its contents weren’t anti the Church. Nice to know, but not hugely informative.”

On they went to the next scan, and to the next, and the next, only to find that they all told the same tangled ur-story. Though there were plenty of subtly-sedimented ink layers in all the trickiest sections, there was nothing to be found that could obviously be used to disprove hoax theories… really, nothing at all. It was evening now, almost time for the Beinecke to shut for the day: Emm idly looked across to Mrs Kurtz’s cameo-lapelled grey coat hung up in the corner, and wondered where she was.

“Let’s try that first scan again”, Graydon sighed wearily. The pair of them looked again at the back page’s spectrally-enhanced marginalia, their faces pressed close to each other, both now squinting at the mysterious top line, tracing out the ductus, weft and weave of the letters with their fingers.

Graydon could feel the skin on Emm’s cheek buzzing hot with their intensely shared concentration: he was sharply reminded of the intensity of his marriage to Marina. For all the sexual bravado and defensive sparkiness of Emm’s verbal fencing, working with her in this way was provoking feelings in Graydon that nobody since Marina had managed. The timing was just plain wrong, and he hated to admit it, but right now his mind was turned on.

“It all makes sense apart from that last word”, Emm was saying, several thousand miles away from his runaway train of thought. “Por le bon Simon Sint… what?” She grabbed his hand and started carefully tracing out the super-enlarged letters with his index finger, as if he was the quill, her quill. However, her attempt at reconstructive history was having a dramatically different effect on Graydon from the one intended. It now wasn’t just his mind that was turned on.

For a minute that seemed to stretch out into an hour or a day, his gaze tennis-matched back and forth between the word she was tracing out imperfectly with his finger and her implausibly attractive face. Even though time was rapidly running out, he felt there was something he really had to tell her. “Emm”, he began, dredging the words out, “I really think we should…”

And then the door burst open: it was the security guard Davis, with a wrecked, slapped look to his face. “You better come quick. Mrs Kurtz is in trouble. Miss Lyonne gave her the kiss of life: an ambulance is on its way.”

They ran, taking ten steps at a time down the stairs to the reading room area. And there she was, lying on the floor by the desk, glasses askew but still on the chain round her neck, her skin white-grey as high winter cloud. Marina, sitting on the floor next to the librarian and holding her limp hand, looked wearily up at Emm and Graydon. “Heart attack”, she mouthed at them.

For a few moments, they all stuck in position in an awkward tableau, unsure what to say or do: then Davis reappeared with the paramedics in tow, and the whole resuscitatory logic took over.

Before long, Gray, Emm, and Marina found themselves outside the Beinecke in the cool evening air, an odd silence having fallen over them all. The Voynich didn’t seem important any more.

“So, this your new girlfriend?”, Marina sniped artlessly at Graydon.

“Why, yes she is”, interjected Emm, and before Gray could say a word had dragged him into an intensely full-on kiss. “Still, no time to rake over old ground, lots of new furrows to plough, we’ll see you in the morning, Miss Lyonne.” She swiftly yanked Graydon away from Marina’s burning red gape and off into the night.

As they marched away from the library, Graydon whispered to her “Err… am I going to regret asking you what that was all about?”

Emm paused: “It originally was a spur of the moment thing, but the more I think about it, the more support you’re going to need. After all, tomorrow will probably be the hardest day of your life.”

“Errr… sorry?” Graydon stammered.

Emm sighed. “For a bright bloke, you’re not very fast, are you? With poor Mrs Kurtz in hospital…”

But their conversation was interrupted in stereo by the same text message arriving at both their mobile phones:

Dear lovebirds (smile, you’re on CCTV), the Provost needs to see you ASAP. Perhaps you’ll join him for dinner at the Skull & Bones club at 8pm? A.Friend.

It’s funny how two things can have all the same basic ingredients and yet end up wildly different. A Maclaren MP4-12C and a Fiat 500 are both cars: yet few would disagree that they’re worlds apart.

Similarly, even though Emery Borka has – in Steve Santa and the secret of the Last Parfait – succeeded in producing a novel that combines all the classic airport novella ingredients with a home-spun accidental-hero vibe, I’m sad to say that the result is less like The Da Vinci Code than a long series of knowing nods to (and in-jokes for) the writer’s family and friends combined with Internet research.

The reason I’m reviewing it here is that the Voynich Manuscript makes a solid Macguffinly appearance in it, the idea being that it is written in the Dongba language. Though, technically speaking, Dongba is a set of ideographic (and, indeed, very idiosyncratic) pictographs developed ~1000 years ago in parallel with the Naxi language, whereas I suspect Voynichese is rather more similar to the Geba syllabary more typically used to write Naxi. But that’s by the by. 🙂

If I mentioned that Borka’s story also has various modern-day Knights Templar factions, the Daughters of Tsion, Cathars, Paris, Xiamen, GulangYu, Rennes-le-Chateau, Carcasonne, Toulouse, Rocamadour, Padirac, and (yes) Black Madonnas, you’d get the idea: but even that fails to do justice to arguably the book’s best (and simultaneously worst) feature – the food.

You see, everywhere in the world that Borka’s retired, divorced, cashed-out hero pinballs onwards to, he gets to eat (and describe in depth) the most authentic-sounding regional dishes possible, while simultaneously being given high-velocity touristic mystery history by some implausibly well-informed Wikipedia page local expert. It’s a bit like being strapped to a wall and having the world’s food fired at you by a rapid succession of international chefs.

So, I have to say I’m not sure the world is quite ready for Borka’s historical mystery food tourism proto-genre: treating it as airport fiction and trying to read it too quickly would probably give you indigestion. But all the same, it is what it is and there’s no point hiding it: as Popeye said to the sweet potato, “I yam what I yam“. 😉