Requiem at Rogano (1979) by Stephen Knight

Readers with a passion for conspiracy thrillers about the early history of Christianity will delight in Requiem at Rogano (1979) by Stephen Knight.

Readers unfamiliar with Requiem at Rogano may wish to read my notes only after reading the novel.

Rogano is an ambitious novel, nicely complicated and executed with real competence. Knight was under thirty when the book was published, and it exemplifies his passion for (deliberately) hidden knowledge with scandalous potential.

Perhaps only a young man with the 1976 nonfiction study Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution already to his credit would undertake Rogano's ambitious Edwardian setting. Likewise, managing several dozen characters contemporary to 1902, as well as paired characters from circa 1454 Rogano itself.

And only an author who proclaimed a solution to the Whitechapel murders could have no qualms about bringing Nostradamus into his pioneer work of fiction.

The final veil-rending revelation of Requiem at Rogano may not shock, given the architecture of Knight's plot. But the final sentence, pregnant with prolepsis, has a sublime weight.

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