The Eight is wonderful mix of Dan Brown and Umberto Eco, except that it predates either or them. Katherine Neville’s first novel is a wonderful trip through the French Revolution and the modern day (well 1970s) Middle East using a backdrop of chess and oil.

The book has two linked stories, one in the 1970s and one in the 1790s. The 1970s plot follows computer expert Catherine (Cat) Velis as she slowly finds herself in ensnared in a plot to recover a mystical chess board(the Montglane Service which used to be owned by Charlemagne) before the other side can. But the plot makes you work to find out who is on which side of the board. Is Cat the Black Queen or a simple pawn (who can cross the chess board to become a Queen or be easily disposed of).

In the mid 1970s, Cat finds herself on the outs with her consulting company boss and gets shipped off to Algeria to help with some oil activities (the start of OPEC). On her last week in New York, Lily (a chess loving daughter of a family friend) brings Cat to a chess match between two Soviet players. One is an over the hill player and the other is a prodigy who hasn’t been seen in years. When the over the hill player turns up dead in the men’s room, Cat starts finding herself in the middle of a mystery surrounding some ancient chess pieces which might be for sale in Algeria.

Meanwhile in the 1790s, two orphans (Mireille and Valentine), who were raised in a convent, are cast out along with all the other nuns to hide the secret of the Montglane Service. The Montglane Service is a mystical and powerful chess set once owned by Charlemagne. As the nuns leave the convent, Mireille and Valentine find themselves in Paris during the middle of the French Revolution and the abbess heads to Russia to find her lifelong friend Catherine the Great. Mireille finds herself involved with Napoleon, Voltaire, Talleyrand, Robespierre and Leonhard Euler as she struggles to help hide the chess set and find out who is trying to gain the power of the Montglane Service for themselves. Mireille’s diary links the two stories as Cat finds herself on the same path that Mireille took 200 years previously.

You can tell this is the author’s first novel, as she tries too hard at times to make the chess analogies with the characters as the same time they are popping up in the plot. This story predates Indiana Jones, Dan Brown and The Name of the Rose and you can easily see how they would not exist without The Eight.

In 2008, Neville released a sequel The Fire which has a similar plot and style, but not nearly the positive reviews.