by Will Gold
It is spring 1897 in Paris, the heart of the lush, lurid, violent “fin-de-siecle”. The new century is fast approaching. Beneath the already turbulent surface seethes a smoldering “social volcano” of anger, hardship, and rip-roaring radicalism that could explode at any moment. Jean Auvergne has been as a painter with the French Foreign Legion in North Africa and Indochina and is now launching his own detective agency in lower Montmartre. The theft of the Tree of Life, a rare work containing arcane secrets of the ancient Hebrew sacred science of kabbalah, has become the most urgent mystery he must now unravel.
Gangster boss and magnate Victor Herbert heads a shadowy group of wealthy and powerful men who want to use the esoteric knowledge of invisible energies in the Tree of Life to achieve scientific breakthroughs, including radio broadcasting, that will further their tightening of their hold over France. Others warn, however, that these new technologies could enable this elite few to gain control over our minds. Jean’s friend Henri Navarre has just opened his opulent, sumptuous Nightclub Egypt, featuring astonishing world-class stage magic. Herbert is eager as well to learn the secrets of Henri’s master magician, The Great Zanzari, believing these too can help expand his grip over the perceptions of the public and hide what is really going on back-stage.
Detective Mueller of the Surete, Jean’s former sergeant in the Legion, requires Jean’s aid in saving the visiting Czar of Russia from a terrorist bomb plot. Next, Mueller wants him to become the lover of dazzling German diplomat Ilse Von Braun, currently assigned to Paris, to uncover if she is also running a spy network in France. Ilse, in turn, is torn between her expanding relationship with Jean, the aspirations they discover they both share, and her loyalty to Germany.
Jean is probing additional mysteries as well. Foremost is the invisible divine presence and voice he has experienced in Chartres Cathedral. Wise-woman Ramona, his occasional lover, lives in Chartres and is dedicated to uncovering and comprehending the hidden secrets there. With her, Jean explores long-sealed passages and caverns beneath the cathedral they find can be portals into other dimensions. Jean becomes involved as well with alchemist Paul Fort, who guides him down into what lies within our own minds, our own usually-buried “realms of the interior”, and deeper on the path toward his own transformation…
(To be published 2021)