The Eight

A big, bustling, globe-trotting, time-hopping, problematic debut involving - among other things - secret societies, mystical meditations, the French Revolution, chess, computers, sinister Arabs, surprising Russians, and a McGuffin of many parts. Lost for a thousand years, the Montglane Service, Charlemagne's Moorish-crafted, gold and silver, jewel-encrusted chess set, contains some mysterious, magical, and transcendentally important secret. Of the two plotlines here, one commences just prior to the French Revolution. The chess set is unearthed from its ancient hiding place in Montglane abbey and dispersed by the fleeing nuns to prevent its falling into the hands of evil revolutionaries. But when the bad guys intercept and murder some of the nuns, young novice Mireille must recover the dead nuns' pieces and conceal them in the Sahara desert. The second plotline begins in 1973. Narrator and computer whiz Catherine "Cat" Velis, hired by OPEC to predict the global economic effects of a sharp rise in the price of oil, will travel to Algiers - after becoming inexplicably involved with a fortuneteller, a chess tournament, and charismatic Russian grandmaster Sevarin. A murder or two later, Cat learns of the Montglane Service and the powerful secret apparently encoded within its scattered pieces, and realizes that she and her associates are players in a peculiar and deadly game of mystical chess, with control of the Service as the prize. But whose side is everybody on? Why are the Freemasons involved? What was the philosopher's stone? What finally happened to Mireille? Will the two plotlines ever coincide? Pausing only to heave if-only-I'd-known-then-what-I-know. now sighs, Cat will figure it all out and lay her hands on the treasure and the secret. Energetic but improbable, and too long by haiti Numerous historical characters show up, though few are given anything much to do. The action sequences all too often consist of the heroine, aided by a lady chess-master and a yappy dog, defeating small armies of gun-toting secret policemen. Amiable nonsense, then, of greatest probable appeal to ardent believers in pyramid power, ancient astronauts, Atlantis, and the like. The publishers vow - threaten? - a blast of publicity. (Kirkus Reviews)