The Bourne Identity is an extremely famous novel (although it never was made into a good movie - even the movie of the same name starring Matt Damon changed the story and somehow did not appeal to Ludlum fans). The Bourne Identity has been acknowledged as one of the better spy novels of all time (published in 1980). The concept of a man, who does not know who he is, but knows for sure that he was somebody whom people are hunting in a very determined manner, and who keeps on running and running in order to find out who he is (at the same time, running away from his pursuers) makes for a very fascinating story. Throw in the US Government agencies, throw in Carlos the Jackal, and throw in a romance, and you get a very gripping book.

The first in a series of 3 written by Robert Ludlum (the others being The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum) and 2 more books in the same series written by Eric Van Lustbader written after Ludlum’s death, you should ideally read the whole series and then you will admire the way that Robert Ludlum spins a fast-paced thriller.
The book starts with a man picked up from the Mediterranean Sea by a fishing boat and brought to a local doctor, a former good doctor, but now mostly a drunk. His body has many bullets in it, and in order to save him, the doctor gives up his drink for some time, and then saves him. It takes some time to recover, but the patient finally recovers. He soon discovers that he has amnesia, does not remember who he is, but there are some interesting circumstances around him - he has had signs of plastic surgery, and also surgically implanted in his body is a microfilm with the details of a Swiss account with 4 million dollars. Soon the patient also discovers that he has the instinct of a skilled fighter, when he has a fight with a local; as a result of this fight, he needs to leave fight.
He eventually gets to the Swiss Bank in Zurich, and soon discovers a name, Jason Bourne. This may or may not be his name, but he has to struggle when people at the bank know who he is, when he himself does not know who he his. And from this time, he is now a marked men when people get to know that he is alive. He struggles to stay away from them, and soon he takes a woman hostage, Marie St Jacques. He is now thoroughly enmeshed in a struggle with people (who may be from the famous Carlos the Jackal); he also has to face the possibility that he may be himself an assassin. The circumstances seem to point out that. But he also shows a very positive side to his character when he saves Marie after she is abducted and marked for killing.
As the plot progresses, you get to know more facts. He is / was an agent of the US Government, but then suddenly disappears, and then his prints appear at a location where some US agents are killed. Based on medical advice, the US now believes that he has turned hostile and needs to be hunted down. How can he stay one step ahead of his pursuers and make his former controllers believe that he did not turn, but instead lost his memory ? Read the novel to find out.

In this time and age, the events described in this thriller by Frederick Forsyth seem as from another age. And in fact, that was another age. In 1979, when this novel was published, the Soviet Union was the worldwide great power representing communism, with the Eastern half of Europe in its clutches. In addition to the client states such as East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc that were also communists, and some of whom had seen the might of the Soviet army when they had tried to move towards democracy, there were the states that were part of the Soviet Union besides Russia. In all, there were 15 former states that made up the Soviet Union, and it would only have been a visionary / fool who would have dared to claim that these countries will be separate countries within 12 years.
And this is one of the main stories of this thriller. The second largest constituent state of the Soviet Union was the Ukraine, and since it was the second largest, and had known independence before, it was ruthlessly sought to be made like Russia, and any elements of Ukrainian culture stubbed out; after all, if the people are as Russian as the Russians, then where will there be a need to start a separatist front. The Russians (the largest majority of the Soviet Union) used a combination of the Red Army and the feared KGB (formerly the NKVD) to sniff out and break any level of Ukrainian separatism, such that it never reached any dangerous point.

Frederich Forsyth also takes the opportunity to explain several aspects that form the basis of the thriller, namely:
1. The workings of the Soviet Politburo and the politics between the different members, especially about how the various members come to reach the peak of political life in the Soviet Union (politburo)
2. Some details about the concept of a super-tanker and the colossal damage that a super-tanker can do
3. The use of spies and their information in deciding what Governments that are in conflict with each other do, and how policies are made based on this information
4. And a very advanced topic for that age, involving the use of spy satellites to gather information about what is happening in the territory of another country
5. A lot of details about the spy-craft, about how to spy and control agents in hostile territory
6. And for me, something that was very interesting for me, namely details about what the SR-71 (the Blackbird) can do

The novel starts with the escape of a Ukrainian separatist (under attack from the KGB) from the Soviet Union. He meets a Ukrainian sympathizer who is fanatically in favor of Ukrainian independence and against the Soviet Union and the KGB. He takes this opportunity to go to the Soviet Union.
At the same time, the US and British discover that vast tracts of the Russian grain harvest is spoiled, and then you go to the Russian side and discover that a series of freak incidents cause the spoilage of vast chunks of the Soviet wheat harvest, causing a famine of immense proportions. And once the Americans and Western powers get to know about this, they would demand concessions on a large scale before providing the grain. The Soviet Union cannot afford to undergo a famine of this level since that may cause the one thing that any Soviet politburo dreads, the rise of the long suffering population at a level that the use of force cannot control. One option is to use the vast Red Army to attack Western Europe to get over this scarcity, and this becomes a issue about control of the Politburo.
At such a time, the new British SIS (MI6) head in Moscow meets and old flame; she is also in a position to be able to supply information about the workings of the Politburo, something that the Americans and British find very valuable. As things escalate, this information is of vital information in helping fine-tune the policies of the West.
As things move ahead, things threaten to spiral out of control. If the politburo source is used too much, she could get exposed; if it gets out that Ukrainian separatists have assassinated the head of the KGB, things could spiral out of control and risk giving the faction in the politburo the majority to go to war; and if the Ukrainian separatists use the vast super-tanker Freya that they now control and let the oil go into the ocean, it would be an environmental tragedy of the highest order.
At such times, what can happen. And this is the Devil’s alternative, anything you do has a consequence, and will lead to a loss of life. And for politicians and leaders, taking the easiest path is the way to go. Coldness is an essential attribute of state-craft.
The concluding lines of the book are what would shake you when you read them - ‘Ukraine will be free again’; and this is precisely what happened in 1991 when Boris Yeltsin took Russia away from the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union vanished into history.

Imagine the times; there was a widespread protest movement in Europe against the deployment of nuclear-armed missiles and against American bases having nuclear arms on them. In addition, there is still a great amount of tension between the Soviet Union and the US, and a new unknown Secretary-General (Gorbachev, but mostly unknown) has taken office. He is supposed to be young, and given the fact that he was able to move into the Secretary-General’s office in such a rapid manner, extremely clever and cunning.
What Frederick Forsyth did in ‘The Fourth Protocol’ was to spin up these concepts along with spy-work and some believable nuclear terrorism into a thriller that was gripping till the end. You know that the good guys will prevail in the end, but till that time, things could go either way. The further positive was the inclusion of some real characters including Neil Kinnock, and Kim Philby.

There are many positives about this novel; it has a believable cast of events, the technology talked about seems possible, every treaty could have secret protocols (and the fourth protocol seems very logical) believable enough to be cast as the background of the novel. The novel was also made into a movie of the same name starring Michael Caine and Pierce Brosnan.
The novel is made on the concept of a new Soviet Secretary-General being ambitious enough to try to explore British popular disaffection with the placement of nuclear missiles on their country. The plan, called Operation Aurora calls for the smuggling of parts of a nuclear bomb onto British territory and then exploding this very near an American base. Such a move could push British dis-satisfaction away from the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher and towards a left party. And then the most amazing thing would happen. The hard left of the Labour party, consisting of Marxist-Leninists would take over the leadership of the Labour party and set in force a series of measures that would move Britain away from friendship with the Americans.
Why call the novel ‘The Fourth Protocol’ ? Well, because supposedly the 1968 Non-proliferation Treaty had a set of secret protocols, out of which the number 4 was about no nation secretly transporting a nuclear device onto the territory of another nation.
The novel starts with a robbery in which the thief also finds some secrets (defense secrets) and knows that here is some treason; and sends these onto the defense ministry. And thus starts a secret enquiry into the source of this espionage. Eventually the spy is found out and turned over. At the same time, there is a Soviet plan to explode a nuclear device near an American base so as to get Labour to win the elections and then to get the hard left to take over. As this plan starts to take effect, one of the bomb parts is found and an investigation is launched. And thus starts the thriller, with the match between the MI5 officer John Preston and the illegal Soviet agent Valeri Petrofsky (a spesnatz officer); the MI5 officer a step behind but fighting to find out what the plan is and to stop it. A great thriller.

Eye of the Needle was a novel that catapulted Ken Follett to instant fame. It was first published in 1978 with the title of ‘Storm Island’, and eventually became much more successful as ‘Eye of the Needle’. It was the author’s first major success and set him up to write many more successful novels based on a fast action track incorporating a spy thriller.
The novel takes a historical period (not too far back though - World War 2) and spins a story around that. The concept of a ice-cold anti-hero all out to break the secrecy of the allied effort getting felled by the courage of a lady with whom he has had an affair was very gripping. The story line is not very complex, but there is a fair amount of detail that holds the reader.

During World War II, the allied forced had been pushed from Europe and needed to re-enter the continent in order to take on the Nazis militarily. There are not too many feasible invasion routes, with the Dover-Calais route being the shortest and hence the most likely. The allies had however decided to take the longer Normandy landing; the biggest question was about how to protect this information from the Germans and to get them to focus on the Calais entry point. This entire operation was called Operation Fortitude, and it involved setting up a massive fake army so that the Germans could be deceived from afar. However, if a spy on the ground looked, he would be able to determine that this entire operation was a fake.
And the novel is based on such a person. A skilled spy, called ‘Die Nadel’, who is ice-cold and can kill anybody if they get in his way, eventually finds out the extent of the fake army and has to reach his submarine pick-up in a remote corner of Britain, and also transmit his findings to the German high command.
And then he runs into this couple living on an isolated island. A young couple, but the husband got crippled in an accident and is now very bitter, with the bitterness causing their relations to drift apart. And into this comes the spy; the inevitable happens; he soon starts to have an affair with the wife (the entire scenario described in some detail). At the same time, Der Niedle is being hunted by the British military who have found out about him and will do anything to hunt him down and kill him.
So what happens ? Does the husband find out about him ? Will the cold spy be able to reveal his truth or will he be found ? What about the affair between the wife and him ? ‘Eye of the needle’ is a well paced thriller with some well sketched out characters.

Without Remorse is an attempt by the author to explain the emergence of his other main character (the main character is Jack Ryan, but there is also a CIA operational executive called John Clark), the man who carried out a number of field operations including execution and even spying (with mention in many books such Clear and Present Danger, Sum of all Fears, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, Rainbow Six, Bear and the Dragon). The movie is set in 1971, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Most people know of the Vietnam War as a major disaster where the US lost 54,000 soldiers and where it had to beat a humiliating retreat, but the Vietnam War was also the one where the US military developed its special operations forces to a major extent, including the SEAL teams, trained in extraction, working behind enemy lines, underwater jobs, and enemy executions. The novel tells the story of one extraction, as well as the story of a former SEAL whose girl-fried was killed by drug dealers in a macabre way, and his revenge using all his abilities. Without Remorse refers to this fightback and the cold blooded way in which this former special operations man targets drug dealers without any pity.
In the Vietnam War, many Americans Prisoners of War were kept in bad Prisoner of War camps, ill-treated and many times not reported to the Red Cross. They were interrogated and treated very badly. It was a mission for the Special Operations team to try and extract them, but this was also a political mission, needing permissions from the political leadership, with the risk of such operations being revealed. In fact, a previous such operation had been a failure, and given that there were also peace talks ongoing, the State department did not want to agree to such operations due to the fear of the peace talks collapsing.
The hero of this book, John Kelly was a former SEAL and a hero who had taken part in many operations in Vietnam, being a part of the SOG (Special Operations Group). He is now retired, and is in pain, having lost his wife in a road accident. At this point, he meets up with Pam, who has escaped from the torture of a brutal drug dealers network where she was one of the couriers as well as the comfort women for the drug dealers. However, as she is getting cured, in an exaggerated sense of bravado, Kelly exposes her to danger and she is taken from him (while he is shot to a near death state). She is soon killed by them in a particularly brutal way.
As Kelly recovers, he learns, and and that is when he vows to use his specialities to hunt down her killers (in a pretty well written part, the nurse and his future wife, Sandy, sees death in his face, a controlled and determined death). He starts his mission of recovery while the police case does not go anywhere. He is also approached by the military for another rescue mission in Vietnam because of his knowledge of the location. For this mission training, he is given a CIA moniker, John Clark, and starts training with the military.
He also starts dealing with the drug dealers, first finding the dealer who started Pam onto the life of prostitution, killing him, and then starting to kill more of them after interrogating them to find out about the main drug dealers, no mercy involved. In fact, were it not for the fact that Clancy was writing about death and murder, those are very well-written and detailed sections. He also rescues a girl and hands her to Sandy Toole (the nurse who helped him), thus making it clear to Sandy that in fact John is doing the drug dealer killing that is making the newspapers. When this girl is also killed after being rescued, he suspects that the police is also infiltrated and is more convinced that the drug dealers need to be killed. There is a very detailed section on the interrogation of one of the capture drug dealers using a standard compression and decompression chamber.
He rescues more girls, and in a stand off, kills the drug dealers behind the killings of Pam. By now the police have identified who could be behind this, although they have no evidence against him. In his rescue mission, he fails somewhat because the rescue mission has been leaked, but he kills the brutal Camp Commander and captures a Soviet air officer who was interrogating the prisoners. This is used to transfer the prisoners to a safe location so that they would not be killed.
In the end, Kelly gives up his identify and becomes a full fledged CIA person by faking a boating accident as he is being pursued by the police and the Coast Guard.

This novel was written in 1987, after The Hunt for Red October became a major success. It is supposed to be set before that book, and in here is described the series of events that would turn Jack Ryan into a major character, and get him to enter the CIA. The book is pretty tautly written, and I have read it a number of times.
This time when I was reading it, there are so many passages in this book that are relevant now. The description of terrorism, human rights, how society should fight terrorism without becoming a ruthless instrument itself, all these are very eloquently mentioned in this book. It was worth reading just to get a feel of all this discussions, and the book talks about Irish Republican terrorists, who are not known for mass murders. In the current context, we deal with terrorists who are inspired by the more violent teachings of Islam and do not shirk from mass murder, on a scale not seen before from terrorism.
In addition, there are passages about how to counter international terrorism, with an event where there is cooperation between French, British and American intelligence to hunt down terrorism, and how such international cooperation is necessary. There is also a mention of a French military tribunal secretly convicting some anti-French terrorists whose capture was also a secret, and even though this sounds illegal, it seems necessary. When the French had tried to do an open trial, the terrorists had subverted the trial through illegal means, and hence the tribunal. Sounds somewhat similar with the current plans to have a military tribunal to convict the Al-Qaeda detainees. And this is where we have a clash - the concept of rule of law and justice is deeply ingrained, but it is also realistic that the terrorists do not respect any of these. As the movie ‘The Siege‘ so eloquently put it, you need information to stop a bombing, there is a guy who knows it but is not going to disclose, and as per current law, you cannot force him to do this. I am sure that no one would want to be a decision maker in such a case, what do you do ?
This book is about Jack Ryan, a historian and former marine, also involved with CIA in a small way. He is in London for research, when he sees an attack by terrorists. He jumps in, kills one, wounds another and the third escapes. Jack also gets injured. Turns out he saved the Prince, Princess of Wales and their baby from a kidnapping plot by the ULA (Ulster Liberation Army), an offshoot of the IRA. After some time, the wounded terrorist escapes while being transported.
After being much feted, he returns to the US and back to his regular job; somewhat uneasy about the terrorists coming to the US to get back to him. However, logic says that foreign terrorists have never attacked the US inside the country (thanks to the FBI as well) and their funding will be impacted if they do so.
Well, they do, and Jack’s wife and daughter are severely injured, but recover. This pushes Jack over to the CIA for getting back at the terrorists the way he can, and soon makes a name for himself. In another major section of the book, the Prince and Princess want to visit Jack at his home when they are in the US. The terrorists, aided by a local terrorist group, manage to attack the heavily guarded home and kill off most of the defenders and temporarily capture all the inhabitants. However, they manage to get free and are chased by the terrorists over water, eventually reaching a naval base where the terrorists are all captured.
This is a very gripping book, and the section about Jack’s unease with regard to society and its interaction with the terrorists is very gripping indeed.

The Hunt for Red October was an incredible book. First published in 1984, it was at the time when there was a height of conflict and tension between the Western Alliance and the Soviet Union. The book launched the writing career of its author, Tom Clancy, and created a new hero, Jack Ryan. Tom Clancy used this hero in many of his following novels, but The Hunt for Red October was the one that started it all. It was turned into a movie starring Sean Connery in the iconic role of Marko Ramius, the commander of the Soviet missible submarine, Red October, and Alec Baldwin as the role of Jack Ryan.
The book was incredibly researched, and the story goes that the Kremlin ordered a huge quantity of books to try and overcome their greatest fear (a captain of a missile submarine has a huge amount of independence, something not given to any other offical in any submarine, which is why the Soviet submarines had a political officer as well), and the US administration tried to identify who could have provided the detailed research to Tom Clancy.
The story revolved around the defection of the crew of the Red October, a revolutionary new Soviet missile submarine that has a new stealth propulsion system, something that can provide a major advantage to the Soviets (for information, a ballistic submarine missile has incredible firepower, read this entry), as the missiles provide both a stealth first fire capability and a quick reaction retaliatory capability. The US has an extensive underwater sonar system designed to pick up traces of an incoming submarine, but with this new capability, Red October would be able to avoid getting detected, an immense strategic advantage.
Marko Ramius, a half-Lithuanian by birth has risen high in the ranks of the Soviet navy and is now trusted with the best submarine made by the Soviet Union. However, they do not know that he is a disgruntled man, since his wife’s death at the hands of a well-connected doctor was unpunished; further, he believes that Red October would provide an immense strategic advantage to the Soviet navy. He decides to defect, and then sends a letter to the Navy Secretary informing of his intention to defect and sail to New Yoork Harbor. This letter reaches once he has set sail.
The panic stricken Soviets send the entire North Atlantic fleet after him, although they realize that sending the fleet within a 400 km distance to the American coast could be seen as a tremendous escalation, so they inform the Americans that Marko sent a letter claiming that he will launch missiles against the US, which is why the massive Soviet fleet is chasing him.
In a meeting with the US President and other officers, Jack Ryan, a new CIA analyst (supposedly joining the CIA in another novel, Patriot Games), mentions that maybe he is trying to defect. He is charged with the responsibility of coordinating this, as too many people actually don’t believe him.
In order to make it seem that the submarine has actually sunk, Red October declares an emergency, and gets most of the crew off, with the captain staying behind in order to sink the submarine. However, in a gun-fight on board the submarine, a GRU (Soviet military intelligence) agent uses a gun against the captain and his officer, and tries to blow up the submarine. Ryan finally kills him after a gun-fight.
In another tension filled event, the captain of a Soviet attack submarine, and a former pupil of Ramius, recognizes the submarine he is trailing is the Red October and tries to sink it. The US subs accompanying the Red October are unable to fire back, but eventually Red October rams this submarine and sinks it. And finally the Red October is guided into a US navy base. And in order to convince the Soviets that it was Red October that sank, the Americans place a device on the deep ocean floor that convinces the Soviets.
This was a compelling novel, something that was very exciting to read and also approve of the detail that went into writing this book.

Nowadays one does not hear too much about Alistair Maclean’s novels, but at one time they were all the rage. I remember reading more than 20 of them, and I used to claim at one point of time that I have read almost all of them. This novel was one of my favourite.
The novel was written in 1967 almost in tandem with the movie (1968) based on the novel, starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. The story is a very gripping one, and Maclean typically puts in a lot of tension, about double-cross, and a fair amount of action.
The story is in the middle of the war, before the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944. There is an American General who has been captured by the Germans and put in a mountain-top fortress. There is a lot of worry about whether he will reveal details of the Allied invasion plans under interrogation. In 1944, the allies were planning to invade Europe so as to start to fight the Germans in Europe (having been pushed out earlier); and the exact details of the invasion were a top secret. If the Germans got to know of these details, they would be much more prepared for this invasion and could possible cause it to fail. In the end, even after the invasion caught the Germans unprepared, it was still touch and go for the invading allies.
So, these commandos parachute near the mountain and have to make their way to the fortress, something that is equally challenging. The story moves through a number of twists and turns, with some very challenging situations coming up for these commandos. I really like the way Maclean adds the twists and turns in the story, and there is a final twist.

The Bear refers to Russia and the Dragon refers to China and these are terminologies from old. If you are a follower of the Chinese Communist Party, then this book is not for you (in fact, if you detest somebody making critical comments of China, then you would not like this book). There is very little positive in this book about China, starting from the beginning and going almost till the end. Even a person who is portrayed somewhat positively is also shown as forcing himself on the young girls in his office.
The book is much more positive on Russia, although the cooperation that is depicted in the book between Russia and the US does not exist in any form or condition currently. In fact, given the adversarial nature of the relationship between Bush’s administration and Putin’s semi-dictatorship, the story in this book seems almost fanciful.

The book has many positives. There is the usual Clancy style of having multiple stories weaving into the script, slowly coming together and blowing into a tension wracked ending. And suddenly, you see an almost calamity occurring, stopped in the nick of time. Next, you have the usual concept of people with honour, and many people without honour. There is more of Jack Ryan (and if you are a fan of a fictional character such as I am of Jack Ryan), you get to see more of the individual qualities of his characters, including more anger, and of his revulsion against actions that go against his morality.
As always, the CIA is essentially portrayed as a positive and patriotic force, (although numerous other books normally portray the CIA as a force that can act like a rogue force at times). The best thing is the level of detail in the book about military actions. The main battle action in the book is wonderfully detailed; in addition, with the current discussion about missile defense, there is a fair amount of discussion about the way in which to prepare for missile defense.
The book starts with an assassination attempt on the head of the Russian intelligence agency (the successor to the KGB), he is a close confidant of the President and such an attempt causes a great deal of alarm. At around the same time, Russia discovers that Siberia has an immense stockpile of gold and oil, something that will cause Russia to lift itself out of its slow economic growth and into modernity. This stockpile causes immense jealousy among China’s leaders.
And onto the main theme of the book: China. Clancy does not spare China (I would not be surprised if Clancy is prohibited from entering China). Its dictatorship (the Chinese Communist Party), the lack of democracy and freedom of worship, and most of all the restrictions on citizens including the forced enforcement of abortion on citizens violating the one-children rule comes in for special focus. Even though the criticism is harsh, one wonders whether any of this is false (One knows that there is no democracy, the treatment of the Tibeteans, of special religious cults, of people seeking the right to move from one part of the country, and the immense clashes between the citizens the corrupt party all over the country all seem to portray a country very different from others).
Anyhow, in this book, the enforcement of a brutal abortion combined with a crackdown on a Christian sect inflame western opinion, and push the Chinese towards attempting a military attack on Russia’s new riches. The book is all about how this moves forward into an actual war between China and a Russo-US axis, moving forward into a nuclear confrontation.

I must confess, when I started reading the book, I almost put down the book after the first 50 or so pages, but I had heard so much about the book that I continued, and boy, was I rewarded. This is a complex murder / detective mystery, but it is more than just that. For one, the book was set in the 14th century in a Benedictine monastery in Italy where murder has been committed. This was the time of the ‘Dark Age’ when the open thinking of the Renaissance had not yet commenced; logic, science, and reason were all dictated in the name of the Lord. It was not unheard of to blame murders on ‘demonic possession’. Further, where humankind is present, there will be scheming and politics, and so it was so in that time. The novel presents the murder in the midst of medieval politics and religious intrigues (where a theory can be used to gain prominence over others if it can be presented as being based on religion), and derives the complex cast of characters by basing many of their attributes on real-life characters.
The book was written by an Italian Professor of semiotics and was translated into English and released in 1980 in Italian with the name ‘Il nome della rosa’ and in English in 1983. A complex book, with numerous Latin phrases, not a racy storyline and set in the middle ages, even the author would not have expected the book to be a bestseller. However, the book caught public fascination and has by now sold in the millions of copies, something that only increased when a movie ‘The Name of the Rose’ starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater was released in 1986. Many new readers caught onto trying to read the novel that was the basis of the movie, and found the novel to be even more multi-layered and richer than the movie suggested.

Umberto Eco named the lead detective in this novel, a Franciscan friar called ‘William of Baskerville’. Ring a bell ? The author took inspiration from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose famed detective Sherlock Holmes had one of his best mysteries in the book ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. The other famous person from whom the name and the character is derived from William of Ockham / Occam (famous for the saying Ocaam’s Razor - ‘The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.’). In the novel, William of Baskerville, displays brilliant deductive reasoning, unswayed by the simple and easily acceptable reason of ’simple demonic possession’. He keeps an open mind, follows his intuition, decides what is important to investigate or not, and grabs all the chances that he gets. He is assisted by the narrator of the story, ‘Adso of Melk’, a Benedictine novice.
In the middle ages, there were many disputes ongoing, with an important one being the dispute over where owning of property was sinful or not (in fact, in a slightly earlier time, the Knights Templar were based on the concept of warrior priests who had donate all their property and who form an integral part of another of Eco’s book, but that is another story!) and with a section of the Franciscan Order demanding that the Church give up all its property (the Church was exceedingly influential and very wealthy); another was whether this time was the time just before the second coming of the Christ, and of course there was an incredible turmoil between the power of the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor.
The time period involves competing influences between these 2 authorities, with a lot of suspicion over what goes on at the monastery, and there is a need to investigate possible heresy at the abbey. Hence the arrival of a former inquisitor William and his disciple, Adso to investigate. However, they, on arrival, find that a series of brutal murders start to happen, and they get sucked into that. In addition, they find that a lot of the mysteries revolve around the library, and it seems to contain a lot of secrets that they are not able to penetrate. How they manage to resolve the mysteries is what the book is about.
In my opinion, this is one of the best books that I have read, and I would recommend it to all.