After having read "Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" and dealt with the raft of amazing claims featured in the book, it was refreshing to read this ambling tale of the author and "The Damned" drummer, Rat Scabies, as they attempt to find out what was going on in Rennes-le-Chateau.

It's a good travelogue and while they don't find anything earth shattering I found it a pleasant enough read. ( )

As the blurb on the cover says, "The Da Vinci Code gets the punk rock treatment". Our unlikely heroes are Rat Scabies, formerly a drummer with a '70s punk band, and a mediocre free-lance music journalist. When Rat is reminded of an incident where he set fire to his drums, caused a riot, and sparked fighting in the car park for hours, he replies, "Sorry, mate, you're gonna have to give me something more. There were loads of gigs like that." A cast of characters includes Mad Dog (an antiquarian bookseller who was formerly a guitarist and got his name because he used to be "a complete animal" when it came to substances, "whether alcoholic or narcotic, whether swallowable or snortable"), Atomic Joe (suspected of being a CIA agent) and a French cheese van. An amusing satire on the search for the Holy Grail which, we are reminded, King Arthur, Adolf Hitler and Monty Python all failed to find. ( )