- Coppley, Jackson.
The Code Hunters.
Chevy Chase, MD: Contour Press, 2019.
ISBN 978-1-09-107011-0.
-
A team of expert cavers exploring a challenging cave in New
Mexico in search of a possible connection to Carlsbad Caverns
tumble into a chamber deep underground containing something
which just shouldn't be there: a huge slab of metal,
like titanium, twenty-four feet square and eight inches thick,
set into the rock of the cave, bearing markings which resemble
the pits and lands on an optical storage disc. No evidence for
human presence in the cave prior to the discoverers is found,
and dating confirms that the slab is at least ten thousand years
old. There is no way an object that large could be brought
through the cramped and twisting passages of the cave to the
chamber where it was found.
Wealthy adventurer Nicholas Foxe, with degrees in archaeology
and cryptography, gets wind of the discovery and pulls strings
to get access to the cave, putting together a research program
to try to understand the origin of the slab and decode its
enigmatic inscription. But as news of the discovery reaches
others, they begin to pursue their own priorities. A New
Mexico senator sends his on-the-make assistant to find out
what is going on and see how it might be exploited to his
advantage. An ex-Army special forces operator makes stealthy
plans. An MIT string theorist with a wide range of interests
begins exploring unorthodox ideas about how the inscriptions
might be encoded. A televangelist facing hard times sees the
Tablet as the way back to the top of the heap. A wealthy Texan
sees the potential in the slab for wealth beyond his abundant
dreams of avarice. As the adventure unfolds, we encounter a
panoply of fascinating characters: a World Health Organization
scientist, an Italian violin maker with an eccentric
theory of language and his autistic daughter, and a “just the
facts” police inspector. As clues are teased from the
enigma, we visit exotic locations and experience harrowing
adventure, finally grasping the significance of a discovery
that bears on the very origin of modern humans.
About now, you might be thinking “This sounds like a
Dan Brown novel”, and in a sense you'd be right. But this
is the kind of story Dan Brown would craft if he were a lot
better author than he is: whereas Dan Brown books have become
stereotypes of cardboard characters and fill-in-the-blanks
plots with pseudo-scientific bafflegab stirred into the mix
(see my review of Origin
[May 2018]), this is a gripping tale filled with
complex, quirky characters, unexpected plot twists,
beautifully sketched locales, and a growing sense of wonder
as the significance of the discovery is grasped. If anybody
in Hollywood had any sense (yes, I know…) they would
make this into a movie instead of doing another tedious Dan
Brown sequel. This is subtitled “A Nicholas Foxe
Adventure”: I sincerely hope there will be more to
come.
The author kindly let me read a pre-publication manuscript of
this novel. The Kindle edition is free to
Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
April 2019 