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The two more recent books that most closely resemble The Eight are The Da Vinci Code and Kate Mosse's The Labyrinth, but I found The Eight a more enjoyable read than either of them. The novel is utterly audacious in its (ab)use of historical characters, completely, joyfully implausible in its plotting, and I'm not certain whether the language of Romantic page-turners the author makes frequent use of ("dear reader, little did I know that in two hours' time I would be running for my life trying to escape a KGB killer") is ironic or not. However, I found the book hugely enjoyable as it is - I don't know anything about chess, the basic conceit of the book, but any novel in which Jean-Jacques Rousseau figures as one of the bad guys, J.S. Bach as one of the good guys, and female solidarity is an important theme has a good chance of winning my heart.