Thomas Wheeler, The Arcanum

The Arcanum

Thomas Wheeler

Bantam, May 2004, $22.00, 324 pp.

ISBN 0553380314X

In 1919 London, a car full of young people runs over an old man and with his dying breath he says "He's in my mind" and then says Arcanum. The Ministry of Munitions Winston Churchill notifies Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that Konstantin Duvall is dead. Duvall was a mage and a mystic, an explorer and collector of all things occult. He kept many secrets one of which, The Book of Enoch, the third part of the Bible that was thought to be erased from existence in the first century, was stolen from its hiding place by a practitioner of the dark arts.

Doyle goes to America where he brings together the rest of the members of THE ARCANUM, Harry Houdini, H.P. Lovecraft and the powerful voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. They must find the missing book and the killer. The perpetrator is a powerful mage who practices the black arts and is able to elude THE ARCANUM. They meet on his terms as he is able to spring a trap that has Houdini in jail and the rest of the group running from the law while guarding an Angel who doesn't know how to get home.

History, mystery, and dark fantasy combine to make THE ARCANUM a noteworthy book, a pop icon and a source for a good movie similar to the League of Distinguished Gentlemen. Historical figures are brought together in a time when the forces of darkness threaten the world, setting up the classic good versus evil confrontation. Thomas Wheeler's debut novel totally enthralls the readers with another perspective on the evil forces that threaten this world making the horror feel new and exciting.

Harriet Klausner