A post-Derrida plunge into the labyrinth of the intellectual mind (Eco's and his characters') produces a conspiracy theory so all-embracing that it seduces with its power.

A first-rate, highbrow mystery packed with wit, satire, and erudition. As he did in The Name of the Rose (1986), Eco begins here with a teasingly slow windup followed by a narrative that kicks into high gear about one-fifth of the way in. From the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiens, the museum of technology in Paris, Casaubon narrates the tale of how a literary gag got out of hand, leading to violence, murder, mayhem. Casaubon has written a thesis on the medieval Templars--a martial order of monks founded initially to protect Crusaders en route to Jerusalem, and eventually disbanded by Pope Clement. Templar legends--in varying degrees of silliness--have been cropping up ever since: the movement went underground; it was buried within the Rosicrucians; it all connects with Atlantis, Stonehenge, the pyramids, etc. Casaubon meets up with Belbo, an underpaid scholarly editor amused at the heaps of New Age submissions crossing his desk--much of it, inevitably, touching upon a secret history of the Templars. Belbo's boss--a wizened operator of literary scams--wants to cash in on some New Age trade and suggests that Casaubon and Belbo throw together a history of the occult. Joined by Diotallevi, an authority on cabalistic word permutation, and with the help of a word processor, the team undertakes construction of a bogus study of the occult, a random sorting of hermetic writings: ""The challenge isn't to find occult links between Debussy and the Templars. The problem is to find occult links between, for example, the cabal and the spark plugs of a car."" The result is a book uncovering the Plan, an underground movement operated by the Masters of the World. Too busy chortling over their PC, Casaubon, Belbo, and Diotallevi don't consider that even an outrageous theory can tread on dangerous ground--until Belbo disappears and Casaubon begins a serious search for the Masters. A rich, comic work moving between points of erudition and parody, captured here with a smooth translation from William Weaver. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Eco, an Italian philosopher and best-selling novelist, is a great polymathic fabulist in the tradition of Swift, Voltaire, Joyce, and Borges. The Name of the Rose, which sold 50 million copies worldwide, is an experimental medieval whodunit set in a monastic library. In 1327, Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate heresy among the monks in an Italian abbey; a series of bizarre murders overshadows the mission. Within the mystery is a tale of books, librarians, patrons, censorship, and the search for truth in a period of tension between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. The book became a hit despite some obscure passages and allusions. This deftly abridged version, ably performed by Theodore Bikel, retains the genius of the original but is far more accessible. Foucault's Pendulum, Eco's second novel, is a bit irritating. The plot consists of three Milan editors who concoct a series on the occult for an unscrupulous publishing house that Eco ridicules mercilessly. The work details medieval phenomena including the Knights Templar, an ancient order with a scheme to dominate the world. Unfortunately, few listeners will make sense of this failed thriller. The Island of the Day Before is an ingenious tale that begins with a shipwreck in 1643. Roberta della Griva survives and boards another ship only to find himself trapped. Flashbacks give us Renaissance battles, the French court, spies, intriguing love affairs, and the attempt to solve the problem of longitude. It's a world of metaphors and paradoxes created by an entertaining scholar. Tim Curry, who also narrates Foucault's Pendulum, provides a spirited narration. Ultimately, libraries should avoid Foucault's Pendulum, but educated patrons will form an eager audience for both The Name of the Rose and The Island of the Day Before.‘James Dudley, Copiague, N.Y. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

If a copy (often unread) of The Name of the Rose on the coffee table was a badge of intellectual superiority in 1983, Eco's second novel--also an intellectual blockbuster--should prove more accessible. This complex psychological thriller chronicles the development of a literary joke that plunges its perpetrators into deadly peril. The narrator, Casaubon, an expert on the medieval Knights Templars, and two editors working in a branch of a vanity press publishing house in Milan, are told about a purported coded message revealing a secret plan set in motion by the Knights Templars centuries ago when the society was forced underground. As a lark, the three decide to invent a history of the occult tying a variety of phenomena to the mysterious machinations of the Order. Feeding their inspirations into a computer, they become obsessed with their story, dreaming up links between the Templars and just about every occult manifestation throughout history, and predicting that culmination of the Templars' scheme to take over the world is close at hand. The plan becomes real to them--and eventually to the mysterious They, who want the information the trio has ``discovered.'' Dense, packed with meaning, often startlingly provocative, the novel is a mixture of metaphysical meditation, detective story, computer handbook, introduction to physics and philosophy, historical survey, mathematical puzzle, compendium of religious and cultural mythology, guide to the Torah (Hebrew, rather than Latin contributes to the puzzle here, but is restricted mainly to chapter headings), reference manual to the occult, the hermetic mysteries, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, the Freemasons-- ad infinitum . The narrative eventually becomes heavy with the accumulated weight of data and supposition, and overwrought with implication, and its climax may leave readers underwhelmed. Until that point, however, this is an intriguing cerebral exercise in which Eco slyly suggests that intellectual arrogance can come to no good end. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved