The Thousand [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Kevin Guilfoile (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2010

Kevin Guilfoile’s riveting follow-up to Cast of Shadows (“spellbinding”—Chicago Tribune; “a masterpiece of intelligent plotting”—Salon) centers on an extraordinary young woman’s race to find her father’s killer and to free herself from the cross fire of a centuries-old civil war in which she has unknowingly become ensnared.

In 530 B.C., a mysterious ship appeared off the rainy shores of Croton, in what is now Italy. After three days the skies finally cleared and a man disembarked to address the curious and frightened crowd that had gathered along the wet sands. He called himself Pythagoras. Exactly what he said that day is unknown, but a thousand men and women abandoned their lives and families to follow him. They became a community. A school. A cult dedicated to the search for a mathematical theory of everything. Although Pythagoras would die years later, following a bloody purge, his disciples would influence Western philosophy, science, and mathematics for all time.

Chicago, the present day. Canada Gold, a girl both gifted and burdened by uncanny mental abilities, is putting her skills to questionable use in the casinos and courthouses of Las Vegas when she finds herself drawn back to the city in which her father, the renowned composer Solomon Gold, was killed while composing his magnum opus. Beautiful, brilliant, troubled, Canada has never heard of the Thousand, a clandestine group of powerful individuals safeguarding and exploiting the secret teachings of Pythagoras. But as she struggles to understand her father’s unsolved murder, she finds herself caught in the violence erupting between members of the fractured ancient cult while she is relentlessly pursued by those who want to use her, those who want to kill her, and the one person who wants to save her.

In an irresistibly ambitious novel that fuses historical fact with contemporary suspense, Kevin Guilfoile delivers an erudite, propulsively entertaining thriller that seamlessly traverses the realms of math, science, music, and philosophy. The Thousand is ringing confirmation of Guilfoile’s enormous talent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Guilfoile (Cast of Shadows) ventures into Dan Brown territory in his mediocre second thriller. Thanks to a neurostimulator implant received as a child, Canada Gold can process information almost instantaneously, an ability that enables her to work as a jury consultant--and as a card counter. Canada still bears the psychic wounds from multiple traumas. Her father, Solomon, music director of the Chicago Symphony, was charged with the murder of his mistress, a cellist in his orchestra. After his acquittal, Solomon, who claimed to have reconstructed Mozart's intended ending for an unfinished composition, also was murdered. Canada's special gifts attract the attention of a shadowy cabal known as the Thousand, whose members are fanatical followers of the ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras. The Thousand, of course, are behind many of the world's ills, such as the 9/11 attack and Hurricane Katrina, using "big disasters to disguise small crimes." Paper-thin characters and stock chase sequences make for a less than memorable read.
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Review

“Guilfoile’s fast and furious new thriller… is jet-fueled by its author’s unerring sense of character and his nimble, fleet-footed prose.” —The New York Times
 
“The Thousand is thrilling, intellectually stimulating, and has some of the most vivid characters in contemporary literature.” —Chicago Tribune 
 
“Canada Gold is an emotionally realistic superhero.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“A fast-paced thriller about perception, ambition, friendship, family, and the real powers that could rule our world.” —The Huffington Post

“A taut suspense thriller about a gifted girl and the ancient cult that wants to use her mental abilities for its own sketchy ends.” —Entertainment Weekly 
 
“Takes math team to a new level . . . . Comparisons to The Da Vinci Code are understandable, but The Thousand is less about the secret or the secret society than the dozen characters ensnared by it, characters strung out between the pursuit of power and self-preservation. . . . Humor is not lost in The Thousand, which has the sly repartee of people keeping secrets.” —Time Out Chicago
 
“The Thousand, which involves Pythagoras, Mozart’s Requiem Mass, and intuitive art, shows Guilfoile’s in-depth knowledge of music, mathematics, history, pop culture and philosophy. Set in Chicago and Las Vegas, the new novel has every vivid detail down pat when it comes to the sights, smells and particularly the attitudes of the two cities.” —Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Guilfoile has the amazing ability to create perfect order out of what should rightfully be utter chaos. . . . Pitch-perfect. . . . Truly special. . . . He’s managed to take heavy-hitting concepts like the relationship between math and magic . . . as well as the moral implications of advanced scientific research and testing and wrap them up in a package as enticing and thrilling as any Hollywood blockbuster; but more intelligent. . . . What The Da Vinci Code wants to be when it grows up . . . and it still won’t be close.” —Savannah Morning News
 
“The Thousand is a deftly original conspiracy thriller . . . with roller-coaster pacing and cracking good characters. Canada Gold gives Lisbeth Salander a run for haute female warrior of the year.” —Winnipeg Free Press
 
“Even when I was otherwise occupied, I could not get The Thousand or its characters out of my mind. All I wanted to do was find a well-lit corner and read this riveting work, which is equal parts courtroom thriller, police procedural and antiquity hunt, with a dose of conspiracy and paranoia thrown in for good measure. And when I did, all else ceased to exist.” —Joe Harlaub, Bookreporter.com
 
“Reading The Thousand is . . . a little like riding a roller coaster blindfolded: You can never anticipate the book’s next hairpin turn, and it has enough steep drops to keep the adrenaline pumping.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch
 
“Guilfoile’s intimate prose works well in developing a large cast of characters. . . . Guilfoile also offers a familiar and humorous portrait of the Windy City, mostly through the eyes of a weathered south-side cop who loves his work, his booze, Mr. Beef, and Columbia College coeds half his age.” —Chicago Reader


From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (August 24, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400043093
• ISBN-13: 978-1400043095
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #809,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Characters Stranded In A Plot With A Thousand Ridiculous Twists, August 8, 2010

By 

K. Harris "Film aficionado" (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thousand (Hardcover)

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In an odd way, there was much that I admired about Kevin Guilfoile's preposterous new thriller "The Thousand." Ultimately I did find the novel entertaining, with some terrific action sequences, but the entire set-up is so "out there" (that's my nice way of saying nonsensical) that it detracts from the elements that do work. Principally a conspiracy tale having something to do with a secret sect based on the teachings of Pythagoras, "The Thousand" attempts to weave mathematics as the backbone of EVERYTHING in the world. With long passages about art and music and loads of math--it is as if Guilfoile has thrown everything but the kitchen sink into his plotting. If the focus of the book had been slightly smaller--not EVERYTHING in the world--that might have given the reader a bite sized entry into this labyrinthine mystery. But as presented, it's all too much. Heck there isn't even one secret society! No, there are rival factions within this nefarious group!

The story is a little hard to describe succinctly. We've got Canada Gold, the daughter of a slain musical genius, whose brain is literally wired. She's got enough individual character quirks to fuel a dozen novels! Her lover who is almost stalking her, her father's lawyer with a huge secret of his own, local law enforcement hot on the trail of new murders, a disturbed artist who may be the key to unlocking a greater mystery--these are a few of the random plot threads that are followed throughout. To Guilfoile's credit, he does juggle a lot of interesting characters quite effectively. "The Thousand" is never dull, if anything it is overstuffed.

I genuinely liked most of the characters--and that, in itself, is a recommendation. Individual sections of the book can be riveting and the action sublime. But you can't take pieces out of the whole. Even as the novel comes to a madcap conclusion that involves a city-wide riot (nothing is small in this book), I kept wishing I didn't hate the very foundation the story was based on. It's not only that I didn't believe it--I can suspend belief for some pretty ludicrous things--I just found the main conspiracy to be far less compelling and interesting than some of the smaller interactions. The big picture ruined the little pleasures of "The Thousand" and it's unfortunate--I'd have been happy to follow Canada and her cohorts into a better overall book. KGHarris, 8/10.

19 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting but ultimately unsatisfying thriller, August 18, 2010

By 

H. F. Gibbard "Noir Guy" (Dark City, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thousand (Hardcover)

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During the first 75 pages or so of "The Thousand," I was intrigued by Kevin Guilfoile's unusual approach to the metaphysical thriller. During the last 75, I felt disappointed by it.

I knew from the jacket that the book was going to be about a group of Pythagorean cultists who had operated behind the scenes in human history for the past 2500 years. I was eager to meet them. But Guilfoile seemed to be in no hurry to introduce these sinister string-pullers into the narrative. Instead, he spun subplots involving a Johnnie Cochran-style defense attorney, a talented violinist who had completed Mozart's unfinished requiem before he died, a security guard at a casino, and a woman named Canada Gold with almost supernatural sensory powers. All of this stuff was interesting and well-written, but where (I wondered) were the Pythagoreans?

As it turned out, the Pythagoreans were so peripheral to the narrative that at times they took on the aura of a MacGuffin, Alfred Hitchcock's name for a throw-away plot device. Throughout the book, Guilfoile mostly tells us about the Pythagoreans rather than showing them to us. Sure, a few of them make an appearance, but there's nothing really that interesting about them when they do. The interesting characters, in fact, are all non-Pythagorean. Imagine a Harry Potter book where most of the good characters are muggles and you never even arrive at Hogwarts, and you'll see what I found disappointing about this book.

My other beef about the book is there are two groups of these cultists, the acusmatici and the mathematici, who are at war with each other. To me, these names and the concepts behind them were a stumblingblock. I often found myself having to think hard about which group certain people belonged to and why it mattered.

Guilfoile's a good writer and the book's a fun read. I did find myself caring about the characters, particularly the enigmatic Canada Gold. It's just that to me the book felt like a typical cop thriller with a Pythagorean cult backstory pasted on. I might have felt differently had the author taken us inside the cult, to meet some more interesting members (an albino acusmatici flogging himself, for example, would have been just fine by me!), to witness their rituals--anything but another recital of off-stage events and the history of cult politics.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Better, And Worse, Than Dan Brown, January 25, 2011

By 

Andrew G. Oh-Willeke (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Thousand (Hardcover)

"The Thousand" shares a genre with Dan Brown's intellectual history enhanced thrillers - Angels and Demons, the DaVinci Code, and the Lost Symbol, as well as a number of other recent thrillers featuring archaeologists or historians pursuing lost secrets of the past. It also share genre tropes with TV series like VR.5, Heroes, Lost, Kyle XY, the Bourne Identity, and even the X-Files, with the inner workings of secret society playing itself out as our protagonists propel themselves forward with a life or death interest in penetrating its secrets.

Dan Brown's novels are heavy on the art history and historical lacuna, but have flabby plots and flat characters. Guilfoile's characters, in contrast, are delightfully tragic, flawed and well fleshed out. Heroine Canada Gold's flawed mental health (she and her father had intense ADHD) and the flawed blessing of a cure that gives her extraordinary talents but fails to deliver friends, wealth or more than a modicum of happiness, make for fine psychological drama. Her late father's lawyer who is tormented at having exonorated a murderer, the middle aged self-destructing cop who won't let an old case go, and even bit characters like the succession of people who pick up Gold's hitchhiking boyfriend as he flees false murder charges, have great depth, delivered artfully and not a moment too soon.

But the plot device of the Pythagoreans fail to meet the test of Chekov's gun, that "one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it." "The Thousand" promises us an answer to the question of why twenty-five hundred years ago, a thousand souls in an Italian village would give up their lives for this mystic mathematician. The scene is more fully realized on the book jacket than any place in the novel itself. There are no historical flashbacks, despite an "eye of God" narration style that would have allowed for such a scene, even if no character had experienced it first hand. The math professor revealing most of what we learn about them is one of Guilfoile's worst realized characters. We are told in the abstract what drives these people and what knowledge binds them, but not shown it with emotional depth. Guilfoile has offered us the equivalent of a thumbnail sketch of the history of Christianity in a shadow world where it was suppressed instead of thriving, without a mention of the Gospels whose powerful story set it all in motion, and without any testimonials of people whose lives were transformed by their faith. Were his story about the Pythagoreans as compelling as his story about flawed minds, genius and the guilt of those who were caught up in their web, and told in both the past and the present, this could have been a masterpiece. Instead, it is merely a good read with some memorable characters, and insights into how we perceive the world - better than a lot of genre fiction, but not award winning quality work.