(The Cathars broadly represent tolerance in the novel, often of a distinctly modern, anti-racist kind. Set both in the present, and at the beginning of the 13th century, the book has two heroines: modern-day Alice, who begins the novel helping out on an archaeological dig, and Alaïs, a teenage girl in Carcassonne at the time of the Fourth Crusade, which was launched against the Cathars on the grounds of their heresy, although it was always in reality a land grab by northern France against the south.

And fashionably - although she couldn't possibly have known it would have become fashionable when she started out some years ago - it's also a grail novel. My guess would be that Labyrinth will fulfil everyone's expectations for it, not least because of Mosse's passion for the subject matter and her narrative verve. The presumption, on the other hand, is probably fair enough. Her love of the location around Carcassonne (where she lives some of the time) is evident from her generous descriptions of the city and the surrounding countryside and her research into the details of the Cathars' lives and language is evidently extensive. Certainly, the apology isn't necessary here, because Mosse's novel is always intelligently written. On the one hand, it is faintly apologetic, and on the other, presumptuous, because only when books are in the shops do we find out if they're commercial or not. The co-founder of the Orange Prize, already an established author of fiction, has written what she describes as her first work of commercial fiction.Ĭommercial fiction is a peculiar term. For them, Kate Mosse's Labyrinth provides this year's gripping romp.

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