Indigo

Graham Joyce wrote a book that I remember liking, called The Tooth Fairy.  Of course this was long ago, so I checked up on it in the library and found someone had taken it out, so I pulled Joyce's Indigo instead.  Indigo is a suspense/thriller about Englishman Jack, his attractive half-sister Louise, and their mad pseudo-scientist father Tim Chambers.  Jack has been chosen as the executor of Mr. Chambers' will, having no better connection with his father in life.  And the will requires him to have Chambers' Manual of Light published, a manifesto on the elusive color indigo - science claims it doesn't exist, artists will do anything to reveal it ... and Jack will do anything to drop the whole thing.  At least until beautiful Louise comes along, the sister he never knew, and the two investigate a mysterious beneficiary of Chambers' legacy in the crumbling ruins of Rome.  What exactly is the color indigo, and how do you prepare to see it?  Was Tim Chambers delusional or a fraud?  Will Jack and Louise get sucked into Chambers' underground world of indigo?  In the midst of their adventures and strange discoveries, how will the two deal with their forbidden feelings for each other?

Joyce's story of indigo and its disciples sucks you right in from the start. I've never thought about the color that way before - between blue and violet, right? Maybe not. Wikipedia says "Color scientists typically divide the spectrum at about 450 nm between violet and blue, with no indigo." This came as a surprise to me, and if you find yourself at all interested in this conundrum, you will probably enjoy the novel. The line between belief and unbelief is very thin - both in Jack and Tim's world, as it may be in yours. After all ....

"the demon of Skepticism is cunning.  I have met him and looked upon him.  From a short distance he does look attrative and seductive.  He is modern and fashionable, streetwise like a young Roman, and he is intelligent, amusing, and friendly.  But on closer inspection, he is, I assure you, quite the ugly brute.  His skin is pocked and peeling.  His hair is falling out and his fashionable clothes are poorly tailored.  The amusing gleam in his eye is none other than the glimmer of hoarfrost.  And his embrace is as cold as liquid nitrogen." (The Manual of Light, Step 1)