Conspiracy
A Giordano Bruno Thriller
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A gripping murder mystery set in 16th-century France, as Giordano Bruno fights against multiple factions manipulating the succession of King Henry III.
December 1585: King Henry III of France is the last of his line. He has appointed a Protestant as his successor, which has caused a three-way war in his country. As a result, the king is in mortal fear of a coup being orchestrated by the ultra-conservative Catholic League.
Radical philosopher, ex-monk and spy Giordano Bruno, forced to return to Paris, is called upon by King Henry to unearth the motivation behind several mysterious but linked deaths. Each victim is connected to a larger plot to manipulate the royal succession; what they knew and who killed them is a mystery to be solved.
Meanwhile, Bruno makes an uneasy alliance with Charles Paget, a key figure in the community of English Catholics who tried to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. When Bruno is implicated in the death of Leonie, a member of the Queen Mother's "Flying Squadron," he is forced to call on Paget and his connections for help—and finds that it comes with a price, involving an old enemy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Parris's brilliant fifth Giordano Bruno thriller (after Treachery), Bruno, an Italian expatriate and free thinker who has served as an operative for Elizabeth I's legendary spymaster, Francis Walsingham, travels in 1585 to Paris to ask a friend of his, Fr. Paul Lef vre, to intercede with the pope to reverse his excommunication for reading forbidden books. Lef vre agrees to consider Bruno's request, but within a week the priest is found floating in the Seine barely alive with his skull smashed; shortly before, he delivered a fire-and-brimstone sermon meant to "shake Paris to its foundations." At his friend's request, Bruno is brought to Lef vre, who utters the word Circe before dying. Bruno's curiosity about the murder and the cryptic last message gets official sanction when the French king summons Bruno and asks him to investigate. Parris is, as always, adept at maintaining a fraught atmosphere, and effortlessly integrates the whodunit plot with the power politics of the time. This superior blend of religious schisms and murder should win Parris new fans.
