[2] In the 1970s Neville was an international data processing consultant to the Algerian government, and in the late 1970s she went to work at the Department of Energy's nuclear research site in Idaho.
Publishers Weekly said, “Even readers with no interest in chess will be swept up into this astonishing fantasy-adventure… Neville has great fun rewriting history and making it all ring true.
With two believable heroines, nonstop suspense, espionage, murder, and a puzzle that seems the key to the whole Western mystical tradition, this spellbinder soars above the level of first-rate escapist entertainment.” The Washington Post called The Eight "A feminist answer to Raiders of the Lost Ark."
The Boston Herald lauded the novel as “The female counterpart to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose… Impossible to put down.”[6] A Calculated Risk was selected as a New York Times Notable Book for 1992.
[7] Newgate Callendar of the New York Times Book Review said, “Never a dull moment, and Ms Neville makes it all the more plausible because of her intimate knowledge of how international banking works.
[11] The Chicago Sun-Times stated, "Katherine Neville’s follow up to The Eight, a cult classic that impressed many readers as a more intelligent and literary precursor to Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code.