The Intelligencer: A Novel (Abridged)

by Leslie Silbert Narrated by Jan Maxwell, Alfred Molina

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

AUG/SEP 04 - AudioFile

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. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

AUG/SEP 04 - AudioFile

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. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170740734
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/01/2004
Edition description:	Abridged

Videos