Publisher's Synopsis
Review of John Evan Garvey's Secreta Corporis by MICHAEL NAVA, author of the Henry Rios novels--which were praised as "an exceptional series" by the New York Times--and the historical novel, The City of Palaces:
Secreta Corporis is, in the tradition of The Name of the Rose, a marvelously erudite novel that brings the past to life in all its complexity while engaging the reader's sympathy in the love story of Rolant and Audric, Knights Templar, as they travel in and around the Holy Land at the end of the 12th century. Garvey's book immerses the reader in Rolant and Audric's world while never losing sight of the deep bond between them that is the heart of the story. This is not the cartoon version of the past readers get in so many historical novels but a rich and detailed landscape in which the reader can happily lose him- or herself. I highly recommend it.
Synopsis: The Talpiot Find follows a grad student from Los Angeles doing his fieldwork in archaeology at a dig site in Jerusalem's Talpiot neighborhood, not far from the location of the alleged Jesus ossuary. While excavating a twelfth-century well, he uncovers ancient clay tablets that turn out, unexpectedly, to be important enough, for certain people, to kill for. Right next to the tablets in the soil is the skeleton of what looks like a murder victim. It seems that the tablets have been associated with murder ever since they were created. But who created them? And why?
More information is available at carpecranium.com/thetalpiotfind
