The Intelligencer » (Abridged)

Renaissance expert and intrepid P.I. Leslie Silbert has taken her fascinating career experience to the literary arena with her debut thriller, The Intelligencer. Her boss, a 32-year veteran of the CIA, calls her debut an artful and ingenious blend of Elizabethan history and twenty-first century espionage."

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...

Masquerade, Mesmerized - Gayle Lynds

From London to New York, from Elizabethan times to our new millennium, The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert bursts onto the literary scene with an unforgettable tale of espionage and high-level politics played across time and continents. A vigorous and daring writer and thinker, Silbert is an exciting addition to the growing ranks of female thriller authors. Make sure your electric bill is paid. You'll be up all night reading!