The Philonous Document: A Religious Conspiracy Thriller

Plato's account of the death of Socrates names the men who were in the cell. Its own author is not among them: But Plato, I think, was ill.Someone else was in that cell, and wrote down what was said. Twenty-four centuries later a Vatican archivist dies at his desk in the middle of the night, having sent one unfinished email to a philosophy professor in New York. Attached is a photograph of an ancient Greek fragment. The account is real. A sixth-century catalog lists it in the custody of a brotherhood, location unknown, and marks it with a warning.The search for it takes Elías Morrow across four continents. A reading room in Athens. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina. A hidden church in Istanbul, a chapel in Scotland, a chamber beneath Chichén Itzá. Everywhere he arrives, he is following a trail of deaths that began long before he started looking.The people who have kept the text buried have had seventeen centuries of practice. The archaeologist translating the Greek for him is the finest scholar he has ever worked with. She also files a report on him every night.Socrates was executed for asking the questions that made institutions uncomfortable. Morrow's question may cost him his career, and it is only the beginning.