"Sepulchre" by Kate Mosse

4th August 2008

Kate Mosse's new novel "Sepulchre" focusses on Couiza, Rennes-les-Bains and Rennes-le-Château, all towns just to the south of Limoux.  Rennes-les-Bains is a spa town and Rennes-le-Château a hilltop village with purported mystic links to the Holy Grail.  In the late 19th century, Abbé Bérenger Saunière http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9renger_Sauni%C3%A8re , village priest to Rennes-le-Château, started to arouse suspicions by his apparently profligate spending on the elaborate and unusual restoration of the church, the road he paid for to connect Couiza to the hilltop village, and his own personal house and comfort.

"The Da Vinci Code" was a popular amalgam of unproven related theories but anyone interested in learning more could do worse than read any of these: "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, "Rex Deus" by Marilyn Hopkins, Graham Simmans and Tim Wallace-Murphy and "Key to the Sacred Pattern: the untold story of Rennes-le-Château" by Henry Lincoln.

Kate's first novel, "Labyrinth" was based in the old cité of Carcassonne and no doubt did a lot for tourism and house-buying in the region.  Perhaps this latest publication will do the same for the towns so carefully documented in her latest bestseller.