The Covenant of the Flame

David Morrell

Nov 2011 · David Morrell

About this ebook

Reporter Tess Drake discovers a mysterious altar in the apartment of a friend whose charred body was discovered in a nearby park. The meaning of that altar propels Tess on a furious hunt for the truth about what happened to her friend, a labyrinth of intrigue and danger that leads to the highest levels of power as well as to the depths of a secret cave in Spain. Less
From the master of high action comes a novel of deception and intrigue that paved the way for the history-based religious thrillers of Dan Brown, Steve Berry, and James Rollins.

In 1244, at the infamous fortress of Montségur in southwestern France, Christian Inquisitors massacred the last vestige of a heresy known as Mithraism, once the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. But was the heresy in fact destroyed? In today’s New York City, reporter Tess Drake discovers a mysterious altar in the apartment of a friend whose charred body was discovered in a nearby park. The altar (a version of it exists in the British Museum) depicts a man astride a bull, plunging a knife into its neck while a dog, a scorpion, and a snake drink the blood. The meaning of that altar propels Tess on a furious hunt for the truth about what happened to her friend, a labyrinth of intrigue and danger that leads to the highest levels of power as well as to the depths of a secret cave in Spain.

This special e-version of THE COVENANT OF THE FLAME has a revised text and an introduction in which David Morrell describes the unusual personal events that prompted him to write this novel.

“A mega-thriller by any standard”

—Associated Press

“David Morrell is, to me, the finest thriller writer living today, bar none.”

—Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author of The Jefferson Key

“A master storyteller”

—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Colony

About the author

David Morrell, an award-winning Canadian writer of horror fiction, was born in 1943 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He was educated at the University of Waterloo and earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Morrell is best known as the creator of John Rambo, the hero of his first novel, First Blood. The novel was adapted for screen and starred Sylvester Stallone. Although Morrell was not happy with the depiction of the Rambo character in the movie, he did write several sequels to First Blood and two further scripts for the sequels to the original movie. He also wrote a number of other books including The Brotherhood of the Rose which became a best seller in 1984. David Morrell has written one scholarly work, John Barth: An Introduction, published by Pennsylvania State University in 1977 and has taught at the University of Iowa. He now lives in the United States with his wife and daughter (another child, a son, is deceased).