Author: Thore D. Hansen (translated from German by Anne Adams)
AmazonCrossing, 2012
471 pages
I'm glad I took a chance, because despite a few first-time-author flaws, this is the best conspiracy novel I've read since Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (which blew me away when I read it back in 2004).
The Celtic Conspiracy's plot begins at the end of WWII with the discovery of a hidden cache of well-preserved scrolls and other items in a cave near Klagenfurt, Austria. The finder is a British Army officer who happens to be an archaeologist. Sensing that he's onto something, he takes what he can carry and then has his men seal up the cave's entrance to preserve the contents.
Flash-forward to the present time, when several characters cross paths, drawn together by Ronald MacLary, an Irish-American judge who happens to be a conspiracy theorist in his, um, spare time. Turns out MacLary is the son of the British Army officer/archeologist we met in the opening section, and he remembers his Dad telling him stories about the Celtic Druids and the stash of stuff he found in Austria. Unfortunately, the elder MacLary died when the boy was still young. The son's life obsession has been around solving the mystery his Dad passed along to him.
Joined by a couple of modern-day Druids, a linguist, and an attorney keen on revenge against the Church for wiping out so many indigenous cultures in the name of religion, MacLary sets out to find the antiquities and to learn what really happened. But of course, there are those who don't want these things found, because they'll reveal a secret that's been kept for some two thousand years.
There are lots of tense moments, and sometimes . . . sometimes, things seem a bit rushed. The Celtic Conspiracy at times seems like a spy novel, then a courtroom drama, then a sort of New Age manifesto. I think it's the latter that's sparking some of the low ratings for the book, but I could be wrong.
Bottom line? I was entertained. Not blown away. But entertained nonetheless. And it was nice to read a book that was (at least partly) set in Austria. :)
