Splintered Icon »

PROFESSOR BILL NAPIER is a career scientist, trained in Scotland, with a specialty in astronomy. He has long been fascinated by rumors of a 16th Century conspiracy to mix astronomy, history, and religion in a plot that would have changed the world forever. The mysterious icon at the center of Splintered Icon the key to that conspiracy, inspired in part by John Dee, the Queen's astronomer. Dee was also a shadowy spy operating under the code name 007. Bill Napier lives in Ireland with his wife. Visit his Web site at www.splinteredicon.com.

One of the most captivating books you will ever read, Bill Napier's debut novel Splintered Icon will shatter your illusions with its high stakes plot, fascinating characters, and unrelenting suspense...

ITS HISTORY IS UNTOLD.

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...

ITS MYSTERIES ARE INCREDIBLE.

Enlisting the aide of eminent map dealer Zola Kahn, 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.

ITS REVELATIONS ARE LIFE AND DEATH.

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.

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Publishers Weekly

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 millions-or could be the key to a worldwide terrorist plot. Deftly mixing history, science and fiction, Napier keeps the action escalating toward a satisfying climax. Agent, Peter Robinson at Curtis Brown (U.K.). (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.