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ESOTERICA_THRILLERS

                                              March 2, 2005


Has anyone ever made a
definitive list of
Esoterica Thrillers?

You know the kind of
thing I mean, right?

The main character
investigates a mystery,
and it turns out to be
intimately bound up in an
ancient conspiracy of
Templars and Masons who
encoded a secret message
in a certain edition of
the Tarot deck, which if
analyzed correctly via
nuclear magnetic resonance          
will reveal a Terrible           Another important feature is    
Secret that competing            historical celebrity name    
factions are attempting to       dropping.                      
control/suppress/publish on                                      
livejournal/etc.                 A letter sent by Thomas         
                                 Moore to Roger Bacon         
                                 explaining the *real*       
                                 reason the Puritans needed  
                                 to be sent to America.      
One example:                                               
                                                           
"The Club Dumas" (1993)                                    
by Arturo Pérez-Reverte,                                        
                                  CLUB_DUMAS 


There are certainly many other examples:
   
There's the movie "Pi". 

And as I understand it
"Focault's Pendulum" by
Eco is another one.
                                                                          
   But then, I've heard it                                                
   suggested "Focault's Pendulum"                                         
   is a "sendup" of the genre.                                            
   Purely ironic of course.  A                                            
   man like Umberto Eco wouldn't                                          
   get his hands dirty writing         (He *transcends genre*.)           
   mere entertainment.  He just                                           
   writes *about* them.                                                   
                                                                          
                                                                          
An old favorite of mine is Fritz Leiber's                                 
"Our Lady Of Darkness": "Megapolisomancy"           Oh, and of course,       
amidst the hills of San Francisco; the              there's that Dan       
modern results of some very old spells              Brown book...     
cast in a ritual performed with August                              
Derleth and Jack London...                             DA_VINCI_FLU       




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