A ‘Ripping Yarn’ of the first order. A romantic adventure with suspense and drama in buckets as we are introduced to Adam Carver and his servant Quint. With heroes and villains, and it is not always clear which is which, we have Victorian London, upper classes and the lowest of the low, with mystery, murder, theft, blackmail, buried Greek treasure, infamy, treachery, bandits and a beautiful maiden. What more could you want? The plot is complex and sinuous but it all becomes clear in the end and right triumphs, justice prevails – of course. Great stuff, a real page-turner which begins a series.
It is 1870. When amateur archaeologist Adam Carver and his loyal but obdurate retainer Quint are visited in their lodgings in London's Doughty Street by an attractive young woman, their landlady is not pleased. The visitor's arrival pitches Carver and Quint headlong into an elaborate mystery which comes to centre on the existence (or not) of a lost text in Ancient Greek, one that may reveal the whereabouts of the treasure hoard of Philip II of Macedonia. Two deaths soon ensue as master and manservant follow what clues they can grasp in the roughest and most genteel parts of the teeming metropolis, with the whiff of cordite and blackmail never far from their nostrils. The scene shifts to Athens and the wilder fastness of a Greece gripped by political unrest as Carver and Quint join forces with Adam's former Cambridge tutor in an attempt to track down the elusive text. But nothing is quite what it seems, and no one involved is prepared for the final, shocking denouement amidst the extraordinary hilltop monasteries of Meteora...
'The book bristles with an energy and inventiveness that positively leap off the page. . . . readers may well be looking to spend more time in the company of Carver and Quint.'-- Crime Time
Author
About Nick Rennison
Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller. His books include Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography, Robin Hood: Myth, History, Culture, The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide and 100 Must-Read Historical Novels. He is a regular reviewer of historical fiction for both The Sunday Times and BBC History Magazine.
