Helpful Score: 2
In this suspenseful Da Vinci Code knockoff from British author Napier (Nemesis), Harry Blake, an antiquarian book dealer specializing in old maps and manuscripts, agrees to help Sir Toby Tebbit translate a 400-year-old journal, written in code, that Sir Toby has inherited from a heretofore unknown relative in Jamaica. The manuscript chronicles the adventures of a young cabin boy, James Ogilvie, who traveled to the Americas as part of a secret mission for the Elizabethan crown. When a mysterious woman approaches Blake about buying the journal, he refuses to sell. Later, Blake returns to the Tebbit household to discover that Sir Toby has been brutally murdered. Teaming up with rival historian Zola Kahn and Sir Toby's daughter, Debbie, the trio soon join a race to determine the meaning behind Ogilvie's encrypted text. A trail reaching as far back as the Crusades leads toward a holy relic that could be worth millionsor could be the key to a worldwide terrorist plot. Deftly mixing history, science and fiction, Napier keeps the action escalating toward a satisfying climax.
Helpful Score: 2
A very interesting mystery novel. It keeps your attention throughout the book.
Helpful Score: 2
A historical icon is central to this book. A secret conspiracy over centuries of time unravels. This is an intersting book as involves coded items and secret purposes based around a diary that dates from the 16th century and a religious icon that is a thousand years old.
Helpful Score: 1
This book had me on the edge of my seat, and I couldn't put it down until I finished it---I HAD to find out what was coming next!
From back cover:
Antiquarian bookseller Harry Blake is hired to appraise a four-hundred-year old journal bequeathed to a wealthy landowner. At first, it appears to be only the curiously coded diary of a young cabin boy aboard Sir Walter Raleigh's celebrated 1585 Elizabethan expedition. But when Harry's client is murdered and his own life is threatened, he realizes that he's opened the door to a mystery worth killing for.
Enlisting the aid of eminent map dealer Zola Khan, Harry uncovers something else. Buried in the cryptic writings are puzzling references to a 'secret purpose'; terrified revelations of murder at sea, and an astonishing disclosure: the location of an invaluable holy relic thought lost for more than a thousand years.
Harry and Zola follow a trail that leads them to an ancient and dangerous secret conspiracy still unraveling after centuries, and possessing the unimaginable power to literally change history--and splinter it forever.
From back cover:
Antiquarian bookseller Harry Blake is hired to appraise a four-hundred-year old journal bequeathed to a wealthy landowner. At first, it appears to be only the curiously coded diary of a young cabin boy aboard Sir Walter Raleigh's celebrated 1585 Elizabethan expedition. But when Harry's client is murdered and his own life is threatened, he realizes that he's opened the door to a mystery worth killing for.
Enlisting the aid of eminent map dealer Zola Khan, Harry uncovers something else. Buried in the cryptic writings are puzzling references to a 'secret purpose'; terrified revelations of murder at sea, and an astonishing disclosure: the location of an invaluable holy relic thought lost for more than a thousand years.
Harry and Zola follow a trail that leads them to an ancient and dangerous secret conspiracy still unraveling after centuries, and possessing the unimaginable power to literally change history--and splinter it forever.
