The Brotherhood of the Rose is a special book for David Mor- rell. It was his first New York Times bestseller. Later, it was the basis for an NBC miniseries. The “rose” in the title refers to the ancient symbol of secrecy as depicted in Greek mythol- ogy. Clandestine councils used to meet with a rose dangling above them and vowed not to divulge what was said sub rosa, under the rose. The “brotherhood” refers to two young men, Saul and Chris, who were raised in an orphanage and even- tually recruited into the CIA by a man who acted as their fos- ter father. Having spent time in an orphanage himself, Morrell readily identified with the main characters.
When Brotherhood was completed, Morrell so missed its world that he wrote a similarly titled thriller, The Fraternity of the Stone, in which he introduced a comparable character, Drew MacLane. Still hooked on the theme of orphans and foster fathers (Morrell thinks of this as self-psychoanalysis), he wrote The League of Night and Fog in which Saul from the first thriller meets Drew from the second. Night and Fog is thus a double sequel that is also the end of a trilogy. Morrell in- tended to write a further thriller in the series and left a de- liberately dangling plot thread that was supposed to propel
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him into a fourth book. But his fifteen-year-old son, Matthew, died from complications of a rare form of bone cancer known as Ewing’s sarcoma. Suddenly, the theme of orphans search- ing for foster fathers no longer spoke to his psyche. Morrell was...
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