Where Dead Men Meet
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning author of The Information Officer and The Savage Garden returns with a riveting, stylish thriller set in Europe, on the cusp of the World War Two.
Luke Hamilton, a junior air intelligence officer at the British Embassy in Paris, appears to have luck on his side. Mysteriously orphaned in England as an infant, he was nurtured by a kind nun, Sister Agnes, and later adopted by a caring, wealthy couple. Now, the year is 1937, and, in Paris, Luke thrives amid the climate of intrigue, caused by the looming international trouble. Luke is taken off guard, however, when word reaches him that Sister Agnes has been brutally murdered. Before Luke has a chance to leave for the funeral, he finds himself hotly pursued as the target of an assassination attempt.
A clear case of mistaken identity—or so it first appears.
In this lightning-paced historical thriller, Mark Mills transports readers to a continent sliding towards war. As Luke is hunted from Paris to Venice by relentless, cunning killers, he gradually comes to learn the reason he is being pursued lies deep in a past that predates his abandonment as a baby on the steps of the orphanage…to an act of revenge gone wrong twenty-five years ago.
“A grand adventure, in the tradition of Graham Greene’s ‘entertainments,’ and John Buchan’s before that.” — Joseph Finder, New York Times bestseller author
“The best novel I read this year. Where Dead Men Meet is an exhilarating and hair-raising charge through pre-war Europe… A powerful tale of revenge, love, and self-discovery.” — Mark Pryor, author of The Paris Librarian
“..[A]n elegantly plotted mystery…Superb period drama.”
–The Sunday Mirror (UK)
“Reminiscent of Eric Ambler’s brilliant thrillers of the 1930s…close to matching him in page-turning readability.”
–The Sunday Times (UK)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The first sentence of this uneven historical thriller from Mills (Amagansett) is a genuine attention-getter: "Had Sister Agnes been less devout, she would have lived to celebrate her forty-eighth birthday." Late one night in 1937, at a Carthusian nunnery in England, Sister Agnes encounters an intruder who demands information about a baby boy abandoned at the nunnery's steps 25 years earlier. Sister Agnes knows he's referring to Luke Hamilton, whose many letters she keeps in a box beneath her bed. When she feigns ignorance, the man bludgeons her to death. Across the Channel, Luke, who's assigned to the British embassy in Paris, is devastated by the news of the nun's death. His world is further upended after he's approached by a person calling himself Bernard Fautrier, which Luke assumes is an alias. At a subsequent meeting, Fautrier warns Luke that if something happens to him, Luke must disappear and take on a new identity. After this dramatic and intriguing setup, the tension gradually peters out. Memorable characters fail to redeem the so-so plot line.
