This is an engrossing novel of both suspense and idea. Its central character is a successful Hollywood scriptwriter at work in Italy and France on the filming of the first script he ever has fully believed in. It takes place on the Amalfi Coast and in the Paris of today and of the Nazi occupation. Over it all broods the heritage of a long forgotten heresy out of which grew a brilliant and free culture in medieval France, which was exterminated--so the Church of Rome thought--seven centuries ago.