Kill the Dog!

Apr 2017
The Eight - Katherine Neville - Harper, 2009
* * *
This is a female version of The Da Vinci Code and is just as silly. The plot is a world-spanning conspiracy thriller about a macguffin chess set that has Mysterious Powers. The main character, Catherine Velis, is a competent and capable woman, at least until the handsome Russian chess player turns up, when she promptly loses her heart and her agency. She has an annoying sidekick called Lily who likes driving fast cars and has an indestructible lap dog which the author likes far more than I did (I was going "kill the dog! kill the dog!" in the hope that Neville would use it to drum up some otherwise lacking dramatic tension). There are many interludes allowing a large number of historical personages, from Charlemagne to Napoleon to Catherine the Great, to be in on the plot. If you can switch your brain off sufficiently to let all the absurdity wash over you, it's actually quite fun.