THISTLE SOCIETY

A novel in which a family discovers a mysterious inheritance in New Orleans.

As Biggio’s novel opens, stalled author Rory Blas is opening up an old New Orleans mansion his wife Tess inherited from her grandmother Emma Darling. He’s visited by bustling neighbor Lucy Pearl, hears all about local soothsayer Madame Cassandra, and learns a bit about both the house’s designer, Bradish Johnson, and also about Emma Darling herself. As he’s settling himself and soaking up the local atmosphere (“The food sizzled, and so did the gossip,” readers are told. “Rory overheard talk about someone who was looking to have a voodoo curse removed”), he’s in steady phone contact with his wife, Tess, and his daughter, Christine, back in Philadelphia, but his efforts to clean and straighten the old house before they arrive are complicated by odd portents and mysterious dreams in which he’s told, “The key to the treasure is the treasure,” a line the writer recognizes from John Barth’s novel Chimera. In a steadily complicating plot, Rory learns of a connection between Emma Darling and mysterious items from the past, including a pendant only bestowed by royalty to royalty. As Tess and Christine arrive, these arcane plot threads multiply and become more bizarre, expanding to include not only the FBI, but both King Arthur’s Round Table and End Times prophecy. Rory, Lucy, Tess, and an assorted cast of secondary characters are drawn into a deepening mystery connected with the long-buried secrets of that old house. Along the way, Biggio fills her story with generous amounts of New Orleans fact and lore (including the obligatory veiled reference to novelist Anne Rice), so readers can learn about the scene of this mystery right alongside Rory and his family. But does the past hold any dangers for them in the present?

It’s an intentionally crowded, even overstuffed plot structure, and Biggio does a remarkably adroit job of keeping it all evenly balanced and steadily moving. She has a very good ear for dialogue and leans into this talent by letting the cast’s conversations carry the majority of the weight of many scenes. All the players in her tale have distinct voices, which not only helps to keep the intricate plot lines untangled, but also allows her the luxury of making a great many of her people unlikable without sacrificing their three-dimensionality. Rory in particular dominates most of the narrative without ever coming close to being sympathetic, and many of the book’s New Orleans natives exude Deep South sensibilities without coming across as either rubes or stereotypes. She confidently deploys the twists and turns of her outlandish The Da Vinci Code—style plot gimmick, with its trail of international breadcrumbs leading to the significance of the Order of the Thistle. This plot superstructure of long-buried secrets that could shed new light on the past is carefully mingled with romance subplots that bubble and simmer just on the right side of melodrama. At one point, Rory feels the need to tell his Southern-born wife that “not everything was moonlight and magnolias in Dixie,” and although he has a specific wake-up call in mind, the broader sentiment applies to the bulk of the novel, which gives readers a portrait of New Orleans that’s every bit as colorful as the legend.

An outlandish, well-crafted tale of history and mystery in New Orleans.