Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco.
These days I don’t read as much fiction as I once did. Here’s an exception, Foucault’s Pendulum by the Italian writer and semiotician Umberto Eco. He’s probably best known for his novel The Name of the Rose, that was made into a movie with Sean Connery.
Anyway, years ago, I took all summer to read this book, digesting it in small amounts each day. The climax takes place in the Pantheon in Paris, and I won’t say more about that, except that, a few years later on a visit to France, I happened into the Pantheon, not realizing it was the same place until, there it was, Foucault’s actual pendulum.
The story is about three editors who work for a vanity press that specializes in books promoting occult religious conspiracy theories. One night, in a fit of drunken hilarity, they create a theory that explains all the conspiracy theories from the books they’ve edited. Then, crazy things start happening. Have they stumbled onto a deeper truth?