A cryptic summons to a remote country house launches Isaac Inchbold, a
London bookseller and antiquarian, on an odyssey through
seventeenth-century Europe. Charged with the task of restoring a
magnificent library destroyed by the war, Inchbold moves between Prague
and the Tower Bridge in London, his fortunes--and his life--hanging on
his ability to recover a missing manuscript. Yet the lost volume is not
what it seems, and his search is part of a treacherous game of
underworld spies and smugglers, ciphers, and forgeries. Inchbold's
adventure is compelling from beginning to end as Ross King vividly
recreates the turmoil of Europe in the seventeenth century--the sacks of
great cities; Raleigh's final voyage; the quest for occult knowledge;
and a watery escape from three mysterious horsemen.
A Book Sense 76 pick