Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Divine Geometry by Geraldo Simas. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
Divine Geometry by Geraldo Simas
Non-series
Schiel & Denver (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-84903-008-1 (1849030081)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84903-008-3 (9781849030083)
Publication Date: April 2009
List Price: $9.99
Review: Geraldo Simas pens a variation in the treasure seeking thriller adventure category with Divine Geometry, this time tracking artifacts purportedly written by famed mathematician Pythagoras.
While on an expedition in southern Italy, a team of archeologists come across a polished granite container in the shape of a perfect octahedron, one of the "five regular polyhedrons [that are] the riddle of the creation of the world." Inside they expect to find, and in fact do find, a collection of manuscripts. Unfortunately, the manuscripts are written in code and there is no Rosetta stone, as it were, to decipher them. Returning to their hotel, the relics are stored in a closet as they are too large for the hotel safe. By morning, all but one of the manuscripts have disappeared, apparently stolen during the night. News of the theft leaks out and a reporter, vacationing in the Mediterranean, is assigned to follow up. She's quickly drawn into the quest, not only for the missing relics, but also to discover what they may mean.
Divine Geometry is a stirring, well-paced novel and it's hard for the reader not to get caught up in the excitement as everyone takes two steps forward, one step backward in solving the puzzles surrounding the manuscripts. But there's also the sense that this path has been taken before. To be sure, the names and places have been changed, but the destination is the same. In addition, though the plot moves along briskly, there are numerous detours into history or geography lessons that are not only unnecessary but also somewhat distracting. It's as if the author wasn't able to seamlessly incorporate the information into the story or simply didn't have sufficient confidence in the reader to understand the situation within the context of the story. Finally, more than a few formatting errors in production result in a less than professional quality to the overall book.
In the end, Divine Geometry isn't an unwelcome entry in this increasingly overcrowded subgenre, it's just not a remarkable one.
Special thanks to Geraldo Simas for providing a copy of Divine Geometry for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
If you are interested in purchasing Divine Geometry from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.
Synopsis (from the publisher): In South Italy, an archaeological expedition sponsored by a computer science business man from India discovers a relic inside a container with an octahedron shape, containing five encrypted manuscripts.
But due to the expedition leader's lack of attention, four of the group are robbed in a violent plot, the same night of the discovery.
As dark forces begin to merge, the discovery and the theft become front page news in the world media. Such are the repercussions, the events trigger different global media companies to budget resources to dig deeper into the sensational story.
The goal of deciphering the remaining manuscript, as well as to discover the whereabouts of the others that had disappeared, become the challenge for several people, but primarily for a reporter from The New York Times and a Le Monde colleague.
The suspicion that it could be work of Pythagoras, the master of Samos who was known to have lived in that particular region, awake all sorts of interests in this taut and exciting mystery.
A disaster of catastrophic proportions, the origin of which is still a mystery for the scientific community, could have a direct connection with this discovery.
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