Wednesday, August 24, 2016

The Novels of Steve Berry

The Novels of Steve Berry

  • The Third Secret, 2005, about the Fatima vision, takes us into the Vatican's Riserva, "the special archive open only to popes"
  • The Templar Legacy, 2006, revolves around a search for the lost archives of the Knights Templar
  • The Alexandria Link, 2007, is about a search for the key to the location of the remnants of the ancient Library at Alexandria, Egypt
  • The Venetian Betrayal, 2007, involves European museums being destroyed by fire
  • The 14th Colony, 2016, sees hero Cotton Malone in Russia where he encounters a former KGB archivist, Vadim Belchenko; the archives of the post-Revolutionary American Society of the Cincinnati also play a role.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Braindead (2016-) TV series

Title: Braindead (2016-)


In this witty political satire that features clips from the 2016 Presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, extraterrestrial invaders in the form of ant-like creatures find their way into the brains of various Washington, D.C., politicians and their staff.

In the episode titled "Taking on Water: How Leaks in D.C. Are Discovered and Patched" broadcast on August 21, 2016, character Laurel Healy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who works for her brother Democrat Senator Luke Healy (Danny Pino), meets with her lover Gareth Ritter (Aaron Tveit), chief of staff to Republican and infected Senator Red Wheatus (Tony Shalhoub), in front of the National Archives. The establishing shot before we see them shows a plinth with the engraved words "Study the Past". Another shot from ground level looking up at them with the building in the background shows its name over the columned entrance, "Archives of the United States of America."

The Vaults (2010) novel

Original Novel Title: The Vaults
Author: Toby Ball
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2010.

A debut novel that features a North American municipal archivist, Arthur Puskis, who's in charge of an enormous building in the unnamed City which contains criminal justice records dating back 70 years. The Vaults of the novel's title are located in a subbasement of City Hall. Puskis discovers a duplicate file, something that should not have happened. After reporting this error to the police Chief, he's ordered to take his first vacation in 18 years, which dates the novel's chronology to 1935. From there the mystery deepens as he undertakes his own investigation.