Splintered Icon by Bill Napier

Splintered Icon by Bill Napier

As an antique map dealer in a small English town, Harry Blake appreciates the quiet life. But when a local landowner asks him to value a 400-year-old journal and is then brutally murdered twelve hours later, Harry begins to suspect he's being pulled into something sinister. What does the dusty journal contain that is a matter of life and death? Why is someone prepared to pay Harry a fortune for it? He turns to marine historian Zola Kahn to uncover the mysteries. And when they meet at the old Greenwich Observatory, Harry is convinced there is more to Zola than meets the eye. The trail of the journal leads him into a world of deadly Elizabethan conspiracies, with a thread of history that takes him through a thousand years of religious intrigue back to the blood-soaked Crusades and a long lost icon whose rediscovery has the potential to ignite a worldwide religious war. Combining the thrill of a contemporary chase novel with a historical puzzle this is one novel that will leave readers gasping for breath.

Bill Napier was born in Perth, Scotland in 1940. He studied astronomy at Glasgow University and has spent most of his career as an astronomer at observatories in Scotland, Italy and Northern Ireland. He now lives in Southern Ireland with his wife and divides his time between writing novels and carrying out research with colleagues in the UK and California. He is an honorary professor in the Centre for Astrobiology at Cardiff University and has an asteroid -- 7096 Napier -- named after him (it pursues a chaotic, eccentric orbit but is not yet a collision hazard). He likes to cook but faces stiff competition from wife and children. His website is at www.bill-napier.com.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780312354862
ISBN 10	031235486X
Title	Splintered Icon
Author	Bill Napier
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	St. Martin's Griffin
Year published	2005-09-01
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.