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Title details for The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert - Available

The Intelligencer

A Novel

by Leslie Silbert
Jan Maxwell
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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On May 30, 1593, London's most popular playwright was stabbed to death. The royal coroner ruled that Christopher Marlowe was killed in self-defense, but historians have long suspected otherwise, given his role as an "intelligencer" in the queen's secret service.
In sixteenth-century London, Marlowe embarks on his final intelligence assignment, hoping to find the culprits behind a high-stakes smuggling scheme.
In present-day New York, grad student turned private eye Kate Morgan is called in on an urgent matter. One of her firm's top clients, a London-based financier, has chanced upon a mysterious manuscript that had been buried for centuries — one that someone is desperate to steal. What secret lurks in those yellowed ciphered pages? And how, so many years later, could it drive someone to kill?
As Kate sets off for England, she received a second assignment. An enigmatic art dealer has made an eleven million-dollar purchase from an Iranian intelligence officer. Is it a black-market antiquities deal, or something far more sinister? Like Marlowe, Kate moonlights as a spy — her P.I firm doubles as an off-the-books U.S. intelligence unit — and she is soon caught like a pawn in a deadly international game. As The Intelligencer's interlocking narratives race toward a stunning collision, and Kate closes in on the truth behind Marlowe's sudden death, it becomes clear that she may have sealed a similar fate for herself.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 1, 2004

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780743539302
      • File size: 201218 KB
      • Duration: 06:59:12

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      If you can accept the premise that a modern private detective's life might be in danger because of a secret she uncovers about sixteenth-century Christopher Marlowe, then you'll have fun with this book. Admittedly, the abridgment is necessarily cut-to-the-chase, leaving little room for story development. In his silky English baritone, Alfred Molina gives a nuanced, fine-tuned reading of the sections of the book about Marlowe, which are set in sixteenth-century England. Jan Maxwell reads the present-day part of the story about American private eye Kate Morgan in a pleasant, well-enunciated American voice. She uses a quick edge-of-your-seat style appropriate to the hard-boiled writing used in the modern sections. The problem is that the two fine narrators unintentionally emphasize the book's uneven writing--the moody tone of historical England doesn't mesh well with the fast, tough tone of 21st-century America. Too bad. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      December 22, 2003
      Silbert brings hands-on experience as a private eye to her entertaining debut thriller, which shifts deftly between the present and the late 16th century. In 1593 Christopher Marlowe, temporarily bereft of his artistic muse, takes on his final espionage assignment for the nascent intelligence agencies of the time—a smuggling case that may involve high-level individuals. In contemporary New York, Kate Morgan, English Renaissance scholar turned PI, is directed by her firm—which doubles as an undercover U.S. intelligence unit—to look into the attempted burglary from the home of a dashing London financial whiz of a leather-bound volume of 16th-century intelligence reports written in cipher. As she begins to decode the yellowed pages of the old volume, she is about to discover the truth behind Marlowe's sudden and puzzling death. Meanwhile, a mysterious Italian multimillionaire, who has had run-ins with Kate's father, a U.S. senator, is plotting his revenge. Even at its most belief-straining moments (and there are more than a few), the tale moves at a refreshing clip, and Silbert provides plenty of engaging backstory about Elizabethan history, ciphers, Iranian jails, the poison of the Australian blue-ringed octopus and much more. (Feb. 24)

      Forecast:
      Silbert's experience as a private investigator in Manhattan makes her a natural for the talk-show circuit. Backed by a five-city author tour and a 20-city radio satellite tour, plus tasteful, subtle jacket art depicting a crumbling manuscript page, the b
      ook will appeal as much to mainstream readers as to crime fans.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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