Set in modern times, The Secret of Arbel is a novel centred on a sealed coffer that, when opened by Monsignor Antoine St-Vincent (prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives), revealed several strange artifacts. A number of timeworn scrolls appear to be inscribed in medieval French by a monk. What’s more curious, though, is a notebook of diary entries written by a French archaeologist who disappeared at the Arbel excavation site in northern Israel, in 1973. The substance of the diary and scroll...