A Secret About a Secret
A novel
-
- S/ 39.90
-
- S/ 39.90
Descripción editorial
A hypnotic literary mystery thriller about a murder at a secluded research facility and the secrets that it exposes. • "Cyber thievery, lust, corporate espionage, and a host of deleterious secrets comprise the chords of this sweeping, riveting symphony. A bold and original thriller by a masterful storyteller.” —Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Vanishing Point
Looming high above the cliffside along a remote coastline, Ondstrand House is the headquarters of the shadowy biotech firm Ondstrand Biologic. When the body of the organization’s most gifted young scientist, Allegra Stans, is discovered in a walk-in refrigerator—her neck has been broken—Agent Myles is called in to investigate. Myles works for Standard Division, the most feared element of a vast state security apparatus, and he’s been dispatched to the brooding manor, a massive stone campus that once housed a notorious boarding school, to do what Standard Division agents do best—complete the task at hand.
As his investigation proceeds, Myles discovers that “gifted scientist” is only one thread in the complicated fabric of Allegra’s life. There are darker strands as well—of ambition, manipulation, and bitter grievance—all woven into a pattern of secrets, each presenting a reasonable motive for murder. It appears everyone has something to hide, including Allegra’s colleagues, lovers, and former lovers—even the very halls of Ondstrand House itself.
Questions continue to pile up: What interest does Standard Division, an organization best known for intelligence gathering and clandestine international operations, have in this seemingly straightforward case? Could the killing have anything to do with the sprawling estate’s sordid past? And what, exactly, is this research facility researching? Before long, another murder is discovered, and Myles finds himself an increasingly unwelcome presence in an ever more hostile landscape with few allies and fewer answers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spiegelman (Dr. Knox) makes a rare misstep with this venture into quasi dystopian territory. Agent Myles, a member of the Standard Division, an intelligence service of an unnamed country with hints of Scandinavia and northern England, is dispatched to a secretive biotech company campus to investigate the murder of Allegra Stans, who had worked on a confidential project with government connections. Myles quickly learns of Stans's vigorous sexual appetites over her seven-year tenure, both with colleagues and outside Ondstrand Biologic's claustrophobic confines. The campus's history as a boarding school with a sordid past reinforces the locked-room aspects of Myles's investigation, which bogs down in repeated descriptions of Stans as sexually aggressive and emotionally detached. When Myles confronts the company founders with an account of Stans's foray into corporate espionage, the school's horrific legacy becomes an immediate, deadly threat to the investigator. Only the murky, ambiguously explained omnipotence of his own agency can save Myles as he strives to solve a crime within a crime. This falls short of this otherwise accomplished author's best.
