Full of suspense and action, emotion and facts about the Cathars of the Languedoc, I found this book truly fascinating. It is very well written; although more than 500 pages long, it took me less than a week to read it; if you are interested in medieval history and also like an unsusual mystery story, you'll feel the same about this book and just keep on reading, whenever possible. Love and loyalty, in the past and in modern times are movingly described, just as hauntingly as their opposites: hate, envy, deceit, and betrayal. I could hardly bear to read about the incredible cruelty which the French crusaders from the North inflicted on the Cathars, yet Mosse never dwells on this unnecessarily and I had the feeling that these passages were hard for her to write, too. I read the "Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown and I liked it because it was full of suspense and some interesting facts, but I do love this book: it is even more original and full of deep, true feelings and there is a melancholy there which feels right, not depressing. I just wish it was published some years earlier; when I was in the Languedoc in 2002 and also visited Carcasonne, which I thought really impressive, I knew nothing about the history of this region. For an ordinary tourist like me (I'm neither a Francophile nor a scholar) "The Labyrinth" would have provided an evocative gateway to the past!