Roman Labyrinth

Over a billion of people around the world refer to Rome every time they pronounce their religious affiliation. Many more admire the Eternal City for its beauty and inexhaustible secrets. Roman Labyrinth is the historical/action, mystery/suspense novel that discloses some of the shocking links between the past, and the present. As a professor of Religious History specializing in medieval studies I present the story with historical accuracy, and as a former journalist I do my best to grasps people’s attention. This book will interest the educated as well as the young for it is written in a simple, straight-forward style.

A brilliant young scientist Anna Ljudova of the Russian Secret Service – heir to the KGB – comes to Rome, in September 2007, on a secret mission to explore the extensive network of passages beneath Vatican Hill. The key to this elaborate maze lies in the disturbed mind of a former Professor of History of Architecture, Hadrian Fera, who was released from a top security mental institution where he was detained and treated for a ritualistic murder of his red-headed fiancé in the underground shrine. As if walking the streets and catacombs of Rome with a maniac-murderer were not enough for red-headed Anna Ljudova, she accidently disturbs the deadly beehive of the mysterious and powerful Order of the Keepers that for centuries has been striving for dominion over the world. It takes Anna and her cohort on a breath-taking rollercoaster ride into the dark side of modern politics, religions, economics, and the occult. As the heroes of the novel survive the ultimate physical and spiritual challenge – walking the underground labyrinth from which previously nobody had escaped – they make a discovery of the century and come close to finding the mystery behind the dreadful apocalyptic number – 666 – the number of the Beast. This erudite, lyrical, gripping novel helps its readers to walk through the dark labyrinth of life, to find the light at the end of a tunnel, and to witness – maybe even to experience – a painstaking birth of faith.

I have written a number of research papers, articles and books – mostly in Russian, but some in English (The Fifteenth-Century Novgorod-Moscow Movement: The Issue of Antitrinitarianism. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, Berlin, 2007). But I also write fiction, and have published two books of short stories. I live and work in Ontario, Canada. Roman Labyrinth is my first work of fiction in English.