A few prominent examples include Stone Cold by David Baldacci (2007), The Last Oracle by James Rollins (2008), The Rookby Daniel O’Malley (2012), and Hidden Order by Brad Thor (2013), Secret societies, with their undeniable allure and promises of power, have begun to appear frequently in crime novels published in the last twenty years. These novels explore the backstories, motivations, and personal lives of their detective protagonists. In recent years, there has been an explosion of character-driven crime fiction.

By far the most popular book of this kind is Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (2000), the first novel in his bestselling Robert Langdon mystery series. Occult and supernatural societies like this still appear in both historical and contemporary thrillers today. It deals with the Templar Knights and their imagined presence in contemporary New York. The Last Templarby Raymond Khoury, published much later in 2005, is another example of this kind of novel. The novel focuses on several occult societies, both real and imagined, and the danger they pose to the novel’s protagonists. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (1980), one of the most popular spy thrillers of all time, features several shadowy organizations, as well as a protagonist with amnesia who must uncover his true identity and who he works for.įoucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, published in 1988, represents another kind of secret society often seen in mysteries. Secret societies started to appear more frequently in the crime fiction of the 1970s and 1980s, during the rise of hardboiled detective novels in America. The Seven Dials Mystery, published in 1929, features the Seven Dials, an underground group of spies and citizens who go about catching criminals and doing undercover work for the government. However, Agatha Christie, the Queen of Mystery herself, did write at least one novel featuring a secret society. The focus of many of these novels was often on the mystery itself-the clues and evidence-rather than on characters and atmosphere. Whodunits, murder mysteries, and detective stories set at sprawling country manors made up the bulk of the crime fiction published during this time. Mysteries involving secret societies were not hugely popular during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, the 1920s and 1930s. Chesterton uses this made-up secret society to explore issues of politics and identity in early 20th century England. The Council is comprised of seven members, all of whom call themselves by the names of days of the week. The story focuses on Gabriel Syme, an undercover detective who becomes involved in a secret anarchist society known as the Council of Anarchists.

Chestertons’s The Man Who Was Thursday, published in 1908. Though this nationalist organization only plays a small role in the novel, its presence adds to the book’s overall atmosphere of Gothic horror.Īnother example of a secret society in early mystery books appears in G.K.

The unscrupulous character Count Fosco, who by turns aids and hinders the woman at the center of the novel, is running from an Italian secret society known as the Brotherhood, after betraying one of its members. While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the first secret society appeared in crime fiction, certainly one of the earliest mentions of such a society is in Wilkie Collins’s classic 1859 detective novel, The Woman in White. Crime writers have been utilizing the inherent appeal of secret societies in their novels since the mid-1800s. The allure of the secret society-hidden underground organizations with elite members, shadowy purposes, and mysterious symbolism-is excellent fodder for suspense. And while secret societies haven’t played as big a role in mystery suspense books as the classic hardboiled detective or the English country manor house has, they’ve played a role nonetheless. The crime genre has gone through several distinct phases and changed significantly over the last two centuries. Secret societies have a long history in crime fiction.

The secret society