I finally scored a copy of Mark Frost's The Six Messiahs a few weeks ago. It's the sequel to The List of 7 which kicked major butt and so I was really looking forward to reading it.
It is now 10 years on from the events of The List of 7. Arthur Conan Doyle has moved on after having lost his friend Jack Sparks who tumbled down Reichenbach Falls along with his brother Alexander as the two fought the last battle in their fraternal war. It is 1894 and he has achieved great fame with his tales of Sherlock Holmes. Although he lost his paramour from the first book, the actress Eileen Temple, Doyle and is married to Louisa, although she is very ill. The story begins with our now-famous author preparing to board a ship bound for America to do a book tour with his brother Innes tagging along as his assistant.
But of course not all goes smoothly as one Rupert Zelig is murdered en route. Zelig along with Lionel Stern are accompanying an old Jewish Kabbalistic text known as the Gerona Zohar across the ocean. Two revelations follow. One is that this attempt follows in the footsteps of others which were more successful to steal various sacred texts. A Vulgate Bible was stolen from England and one of the passengers on the ship turns out to be Jack Sparks who is in pursuit of the thief.
Having survived the tumble at Reichenbach Falls, Jack has a scar on his face but is more or less intact – physically. Mentally, however, is a different story. Doyle is shocked to discover that his friend is alive but also deeply saddened that Sparks made no attempt to contact him. Jack survived the fall and then proceeded to spend a long time alone before beginning his trek back to civilization and it changed him. He has become distant and obdurate and nothing like the amiable, though flawed, James Bond-like hero of The List of 7.
Jack is in pursuit of that Vulgate Bible and we also learn that he has been having a certain dream over and over. It involves a dark tower built in the desert, tunnels in the ground, six figures who gather, and a black devil rising from the hole in the earth. But he is not alone. Others have also been having the same dream. Kanazuchi, a Buddhist monk from Japan has made his way to America in search of a holy text that was stolen from his temple. An American Indian woman named Walks Alone is slowly making her way west to the desert. Rabbit Jacob Stern leaves Chicago and follows Eileen Temple's theatre troop west. Lastly there's Peregrine Raipur, known as Presto, who has been blackmailed into searching out a stolen copy of the Upanishad.
All signs point to the enigmatic New City, Utah where the Reverend A. Glorious Day and his followers have built a town in the desert and have erected a tower built of black stone...
The Six Messiahs is much darker than The List of 7. It's the equivalent of The Empire Strikes Back in contrast to Star Wars. There's a pall hanging over the story and it starts at the beginning with Doyle's wife being seriously ill and continues with the new and unimproved Jack. This feeling is bolstered by the grotesque and some gore. Kanazuchi is a highly skilled fighter who, when his mission appears to be in jeopardy, is not afraid to wield his katana which he calls "Grass Cutter". This leads to more than one severed head. The leader of Miss Temple's theatre troupe has his curtain call transmogrified by Reverend Day and his telekinetic abilities into a perverse puppet show of torture and death. Walks Alone's journey brings her to Chicago where she stays for a while. She attracts a stalker named Dante Scruggs who is like a poor man's H.H. Holmes. He likes to cut his victims up. Perhaps with our fine reputation for perverted nutcases like Fred Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer, Frost decided to have Scruggs hail from Madison.
In addition to Scruggs, there are other even more peripheral characters that are sick in their own ways which add to the atmosphere. We have a posse of blood thirsty racist redneck yahoos in pursuit of Kanazuchi plus the mysterious blonde man who poses as a collector of rare books but is really a sadistic bastard.
Frost brings everyone together at New City for a final climactic showdown which, in keeping with the dark tone, involves the slaughter of many innocents. The villains in The List of 7 merely threatened the social order. Here humanity itself is imperiled with the rise of The Beast via an occult ceremony. The machinations of the villain here are somewhat Lovecraftian. We have the summoning of a creature, but there is a sense of existential dread to go with it wherein evil and good swap places and Armageddon becomes salvation.
Aside from the darker tone, The Six Messiahs also places a greater emphasis on relationships than did The List of 7. While this is not extremely prominent, the action slows down at points so that friendships and affections get their due. The feelings that Doyle and Miss Temple feel for one another get less of a workout here as they don't reunite until late in the book but they are still here. Instead a fair amount of time is spent with her getting to know Rabbi Stern and this is arguably a stand-in for her feelings towards Doyle. Jack and Alexander's relationship is very important here as is that of Jack and Doyle. The story here is a mystery thriller but Frost manages to deftly weave moments of introspection into it which add to the overall tone of the book.
Like its predecessor, The Six Messiahs was a very fun read. My only gripe is that Presto got lost in the mix. He is a likeable gent and reminiscent of the Jack Sparks we met in The List of 7 but, after we meet him properly and hear his story, he is seemingly always being sent off on some errand or another leaving the heavy lifting to others. This is too bad though perhaps understandable given that there are more good protagonists than villains. In any case, it doesn't detract from the fun.
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