The Grail Conspiracies

Sometimes fiction follows fact; other times the reverse -- a thought that came to mind as I was watching the  60 Minutes segment "Pussy Riot punk band remains defiant of Putin's Russia". To go to that 60 Minutes segment on Pussy Riot

The all female Pussy Riot music protests echo the group Twisted Messiah in my technothriller THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES, with both similarities and differences.

Pussy Riot was formed to protest alleged election abuses and other anti-democratic action in Putin's Russia. The protests were apparently confined to Moscow. So far as I know, Pussy Riot was not in it for the money. Nor did the Pussy Riot members (or any allies) have political ambitions beyond cleaning up their own governments.

Both the real Pussy Riot and my fictional Jesse Cripes and Twisted Messiah have  names chosen to be deliberately offensive . . . in a variation of the old politician's slogan, "Say anything you will about me, good or bad, just spell my name right."

Pussy Riot (so far) is confined to Russia.  Twisted Messiah (fictionally) takes advantage of rock super-stardom to springboard into a world-wide politically-oriented force.  A (fictional) CIA agent says The Company has come up with the bureaucratic-speak term:  NGPF (Non-Governmental Political Force), a take-off on NGO (Non-Governmental Organization).

The women of Pussy Riot seem to have the aim of doing good for their country; Twisted Messiah and the powers behind it have a very different aim. As a CIA agent says in THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES,

"The Twisted Messiah fans . .  .most of them, are totally dumb bastards. There's nothing constructive they want to do or build or achieve with their lives so they're choosing the other direction, to be destructive, to wallow  in anger, hatred, darkness.  That's why we consider them the world's worst nightmare.

"Twisted Messiah, the movement, is not just a fan club, it's the functional equivalent of a covert army with terrorist potential, scattered in cells all over the world. Millions of fans, most of them dumb shits with nothing to lose, an army of dead-end kids all around the world, all willing to drink the Kool-Aid. And they've got tons of money, and the contacts to obtain any kind of weapon, even WMD.

"Believe me, you don't want to think about those scenarios when you wake up in the middle of some dark night."

My novel THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES is a technothriller set in the present, with some plot loops back to World War II, mostly in France, and another loop even further back, to the era of the Knights Templar, alleged guardians of the Holy Grail.

That said, let me recommend another thriller (sort of a technothriller, which I’ll explain below). THE CAVES OF PERIGORD (by Martin Walker) is also set in the present, which also loops back to a good many scenes in the World War II era, mostly in France. And there is another loop even farther back– this time back 17,000 years to the time of the creation of the pre-historic cave dwellings in southern France.

Here the “techno” part of technothriller relates to finding and establishing authenticity of those prehistoric pieces of art.

Martin Walker (day job: foreign correspondent) clearly did heavy research, not just on cave art, but on the realities of life in France during the Occupation, and on the interplay of the various political factions within the Resistance. The German SS Panzer Division, Das Reich, also plays a (not-very-pleasant) role in the story . . . as it does in THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES.

Interestingly, one of the most clicked-on pages in this blog is my reference to Max Hastings’ book, DAS REICH: The March of the Second Panzer Division Through France, which was one of the reference books I used in the background of The GRAIL CONSPIRACIES.

In a small coincidence, Max Hastings also wrote a newspaper opinion piece in a British paper at the time of the London Riots in the summer of 2011. I linked to that in a couple of earlier posts on this blog, as he describes, very astutely, the sad "army of feral youths" (his very apt term) who were immersed in those riots . . . who are also the same kind / mindset as the (fictional) worldwide army of angry misfits, followers of Twisted Messiah, the fictional rock group with political ambitions in THE GRAIL CONSPIRACIES.

My post at that time was "Twisted Messiah" fan riots improbable? Reality strikes in England!

Link to the Max Hastings article in London Dail Mail on the "army of feral youths"