Martin Kern has a special sensitivity to fonts, a skill that he uses to
solve typographical crimes. When a local printer is found dead in his
workshop, his body in the shape of an X, Martin and his co-investigator,
journalist Lucy Tan, are drawn into a mystery that is stranger than
anything they have encountered before. Someone is leaving typographical
clues at the scenes of a series of murders. All the trails lead back to
Pieter van Floogstraten, a Dutch design genius who disappeared without
trace in the 1970s, and who has since been engaged in a mystical scheme
to create the world's most perfect font, which is concealed in locations
around the globe. But is he really the killer, and how are the crimes
connected to his secret font? In solving the mystery, Martin and Lucy
may have to expose Martin's hero as a psychopath.
The main plot of the novel unfolds in Melbourne, while interleaved
chapters set variously in a Tibetan monastery, on the plains of Peru, in
London, Naples and Amsterdam, gradually reveal the story of Floogstraten
in flashback. Other characters include a noir-style private font
investigator, a typographical monk from the Renaissance, a Dutch prog
rock group named I Am A Dolphin, and a collective of Italian
typo-terrorists. This novel takes the reader into the arcane world of
typographers and their typefaces, of symbols, swashes and glyphs, where
the difference between a serif and sans serif could mean life and death.
