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  Prophecy: a Thriller by S. J. Parris (Find in our catalog)  Having read Heresy by S. J. Parris, I could not wait to read more about  renegade monk and philosopher turned spy Giordano Bruno.  Sure enough, Bruno turns up again in Prophecy, this time not in Oxford University but as visiting scholar and favorite in the household of the French Ambassador to the Court of Elizabeth I.  If you liked the Brother Cadfael mysteries of Ellis Peters or Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose,  for all sorts of reasons you will probably like Prophecy.  While it is true that these books could be said to fall into three different genres, all three authors have a monk as protagonist - a monk who is a renegade in some way and extremely gifted at seeing the significance in small details.  All three men understand human nature only too well, though Bruno is prone to make assumptions and emotional judgments about people, and this provides a lot of the tension in the story.   In all these books the plotting is subtle and the writing excellent, and in two of the books the occult features very strongly.

Bruno, like Brother Cadfael, is a very sympathetic character.  Both are exiled from home, Cadfael from Wales, Bruno more violently from Italy.  He has fallen foul of the Inquisition because of the book he has published on the infinite nature of the Universe.  Devoting himself to the pursuit of knowledge,  the price Bruno has paid is high.  He is lonely, having only one friend, Philip Sidney.  Through Sidney he has become an agent of the spymaster, Walsingham.  Thus more tension is set up when Bruno is asked to spy on his host and patron in an effort to discover the details of an invasion plot involving the French, the Spanish and the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots.  Bruno is conflicted because of  his loyalties to the French Ambassador and his loyalties to England, the country in which he feels free to pursue his philosophical researches.

In fact, this progressive-seeming intellectual freedom is becoming more and more of an illusion.  It is the year of the Great Conjunction, when Jupiter and Saturn align – an astrological phenomenon that occurs once every thousand years is said to signal the end of an age.  The streets of London are abuzz with horrific predictions of events to come.  Pamphlets predict the end of Elizabeth. It is death to be found reading them, let alone to print them.  Bruno must be careful that his enemies do not use his association with the royal astrologer, John Dee to destroy him.  Superstition and fear are closing people’s minds, science is viewed as magic, and the state is starting to clamp down on all freedoms in the name of stability.  Bruno and many others have to ask how much they can turn a blind eye to draconian actions of the state when state security is threatened.  Elizabeth herself is finding it harder to protect John Dee from church and state, especially when two of her court ladies are found murdered in the royal palace with astrological symbols cut into their skin.  Rumors of black magic abound, but Elizabeth refuses to believe the killer could be someone in her own court.  Walsingham would like Bruno to find proof of this, as well as solid evidence of the invasion plot, so that he can convince his Queen to move against the enemies of England including Mary Stuart.  Bruno is convinced that the plot and the murders are somehow interrelated.

This is an historical thriller, not a cozy mystery, so that Bruno’s life is in jeopardy many times as he plays his dangerous double game.  There is plenty of action as Bruno tracks his quarry and evades capture and death himself.  As the publisher’s blurb says, “Just as in Heresy, S. J. Parris’ gorgeous writing and remarkable sense of place fully transport the reader.”  This is an “utterly gripping” novel!

Editor