The Tower
Amman, Jordan. When a monastic scholar disappears, along with a rare Giordano Bruno manuscript, private investigator Peter Simms and beautiful philologist Giulia Ripetti are employed by the manuscript’s owner to track it down. Their investigations draw them into a murky world of Islamic extremism and international corporate power-broking. So far, so Da Vinci Code. However, Gallenzi also introduces an historical narrative about the life of Bruno himself, in which he displays great erudition, achieving an ingenious and detailed reconstruction of Bruno’s long imprisonment and trials.
This should be a cracking read, a heady mix of mystery, adventure, crime novel and philosophical treatise. Perhaps, however, because it tries to do too much, it fails on all counts. Even the principal characters are underdeveloped, to the point where it’s difficult to care about them. The modern plot is full of holes. Why, for example, would an international corporation choose to set up its Middle Eastern headquarters in Amman, whose infrastructure is already under strain from its vast refugee population? Why not Dubai or Qatar, for example? Amman’s peculiar demographic does have a part to play in the plot, but that doesn’t address the problem of logic. It is hard to believe in the Biblia Corporation if its corporate decision-making is designed to serve the plot of a novel.
The Bruno narrative is merely dull – an almost impossible achievement, you would think, given the subject – but alas, Gallenzi achieves it. A bit of fun if you were to pick it up by chance, but not one to spend good money on.
