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| The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber |
What if your day at work has turned into your worst
nightmare, and out of the ashes of that terrible day you discover you’ve found
a clue to the location of an unknown play by Shakespeare? Is this your silver lining? What would a Shakespeare scholar do to find
an entire play in the Bard's hand? Whom would a criminal mastermind kill to
steal it? Can the unwitting hero find
the manuscript first? And will he
capture the heart of the mysterious girl bookbinder in the process?
The Book of Air and
Shadows is a thriller about chasing down the clues to fame, and fortune,
and an unknown Shakespeare play. You’ll
delve into the science of studying 16th century printing, ink, and
history. You’ll also learn about the
publishing industry. It all starts when
mysterious letters are found embedded in the covers of a rare book set. This is not a fast paced read. Instead it is a methodical tracking and testing
to validate and de-cipher clues. Whether
the clues are proven or fraud, the criminal mob has heard of the find, believes
it, and is hot on the heels of the others.
And of course, the Intellectual Property Lawyer is right in the middle
of the chase and looking to gain his piece of this action. It builds into a wild story of
double-crossings, de-coded ciphers, forgeries, kidnappings and murder.
What starts as a thrilling puzzle to solve, slowly turns
into such a dangerous riddle no one including family, friends, and lovers are
trustworthy. While you are learning
about the present day treasure hunters, in parallel the author tells the story
of characters in 17th century England. These characters, including Shakespeare, are
driven by mystery and danger to take specific actions with Shakespeare’s final
handwritten play. The author tells a
vivid story of William Shakespeare’s life.
Michael Gruber now lives and writes in Seattle. He has a PhD from Columbia University, and during
his career he was a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and also a
bureaucrat for the EPA. In an interview
about this book, Michael Gruber said, “So why Shakespeare? Because I feel he's
the essence of mystery. Because in the modern history of the world there's no
literary figure of remotely comparable magnitude for whom we have less
biographical information: the greatest single figure writing in our language, and
he's smoke. Because he flourished in a world without copyright laws his mystery
continues.” According to the author, he
was inspired to write this novel, “during a conference with an intellectual
property lawyer on a particular afternoon in November of 2003. When I say born, I mean nearly the whole plot
popped into my head.”
And thereby hangs a tale . . . .
