In May, 1990, Klement Zeman left The Horn of Africa for Hungary. There, he would identify his brother's body and transport it to its final resting place. Karel, the brother, had been an archeologist. His site was a crypt in Hrad Luchov, near the boundary of Moravia and Slovakia. Karel had found something at the site that had changed his life completely. A life that somehow ended in a high class hotel of Budapest.

Dangerous people were after what Karel had found, "The Vigesimal Hours" and the hosts! The book was "illuminated" (painted) by one known only as The Shadow Master. Within it were prophecies. Revelations. It told of The Second Coming!

Klement simply wanted to know how his brother had come to die in a hotel that was way above his financial means. The question leads Klement on a quest of epic proportions.

**** This is one of those books that begins with a mysterious death and several questions, then steadily builds up steam until everything explodes at the end! Very climatic! In a few spots, I found myself fascinated and repulsed at the same time. Recommended reading. ****

David Chacko's new novel is an exciting piece of work that succeeds in doing everything it says it will. And that's plenty. The Shadow Master takes place after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It begins as an espionage story that becomes a novel of politics and finally ends in a shakey walk along the bridge between the living and the dead. The action and horror are well set up as the tale unwinds from its central event--the death of an archeologist, Karel Zeman. His brother Klement, a spy come in from the cold, conducts an investigation that inevitably leads to the discovery of Karel's secret life--a beautiful woman who haunted his last days in Budapest; a mistress in Prague; an object of fantastic value unearthed in an ancient castle; and the man of great wealth and greater cruelty who emerges from behind the curtain at last. How does The Shadow Master end? Not where it began, and not with characters who have the same perceptions that they held in the beginning. By that time, the miraculous has become the expected and the dead a part of the living past.

If you missed David Chacko's earlier novels, don't pass up this page turner. Once again he proves he is master of his turf in both a literal and a literary sense. Let him take you into the shadows of the lush landscape of Eastern Europe where you will meet some equally shadowy and intriguing characters.