The Arcanum

March 22, 2004
In screenwriter Wheeler's cinematic debut novel, an occult thriller set in New York City in 1919, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his fellow members of a secret society known as the Arcanum—including magician Harry Houdini and voodoo priestess Marie Laveau—investigate a gruesome murder, rescue horror writer H.P. Lovecraft from jail, consult evil mystic Aleister Crowley, learn the truth behind the ancient Book of Enoch
, try to solve the mystery of a tribe of lost angels and otherwise save the world. All the supernatural shenanigans, however, can't disguise that these characters, with their contemporary sensibilities, are crude caricatures of their real-life originals. Lovecraft, for example, is reduced to a perverse boyish demonologist, while Laveau is a sexpot who speaks in a Caribbean patois: "So, how we s'posed to get him outta that jail?" Each vividly written chapter is so obviously a film scene that credit should be given for art direction. The author uses nearly every landmark available in 1919 New York for a setting, but a wealth of well-researched period detail is no substitute for a true feeling for an era's zeitgeist. Those seeking thought-provoking "secret history" would do better to turn to the fiction of Tim Powers (Last Call
) or Alexander C. Irvine (A Scattering of Jades
). Agent, Mel Berger at William Morris
. (Apr. 27)

Forecast:
Blurbs from Clive Barker and Wes Craven will help fuel interest in Hollywood: think Crispin Glover as Lovecraft, Halle Berry as Marie Laveau, Scarlett Johansson as a lost angel. Wheeler has an eight-hour miniseries about the Roman emperor Augustus
, Empire, due from ABC this fall. With a sequel to
The Arcanum in the works, can a miniseries be far behind?