An Honest Man
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Paddy is a single mom in Alaska, struggling to makes end meet, who robs a recently deceased rich man's house. She tries to sell her goods to Jason, a former academic, now interested in nothing more than his next drink.
What she stole may be very old, very valuable, and very rare: a mysterious manuscript that somehow traveled from 13th century Al-Andalusia to 21st century Anchorage.
They find a rich buyer for the manuscript but first they need to contend with blackmail, addiction, and just translating the 800 year old book. Paddy and Jason have to navigate unemployment, kidnapping, and an eccentric sadist with a penchant for conspiracy theory and medieval Arabic philosophy. Paddy and Jason find themselves at the center of a bloody contest started decades ago by the dead man, the buyer, and the conspiracy theorist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brown's entertaining debut riffs on the familiar trope of the discovery of a valuable ancient artifact. After Paddy, a single mother living in Anchorage, Alaska, who's desperate for money to support herself and her six-year-old son, burglarizes a home, she takes the items she steals, which include first editions of classic books, to a pawnshop. Fortunately for Paddy, Jason, the pawnshop employee, is too scrupulous to conceal the potential worth of the items. Jason's especially intrigued by an extremely old vellum manuscript written in Arabic, and even more so after he contacts Alfred, an archaeology grad student he knows. Alfred suggests that the manuscript may be "the world's only known copy of Plato's allegedly missing dialogue." Paddy and Jason team up to try to learn the truth about it, and to make the most money possible from a buyer willing to ignore its dubious provenance. Flashbacks to different periods of history maximize suspense. Dan Brown fans will be pleased. (Self-published)
