I swore not to tell this story while Newton was still alive. 1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London, but not as a prisoner. Though Ellis is notoriously hotheaded and was caught fighting an illegal duel, he arrives at the Tower as assistant to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is Warden of the Royal Mint, which resides within the Tower walls, and he has accepted an appointment from the King of England and Parliament to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten to bring down the shaky, war-weakened economy. Ellis may lack Newton’s scholarly mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves himself to be an invaluable sidekick and devoted apprentice to Newton as they zealously pursue these criminals. While Newton and Ellis investigate a counterfeiting ring, they come upon a mysterious coded message on the body of a man killed in the Lion Tower, as well as alchemical symbols that indicate this was more than just a random murder. Despite Newton’s formidable intellect, he is unable to decipher the cryptic message or any of the others he and Ellis find as the body count increases within the Tower complex. As they are drawn into a wild pursuit of the counterfeiters that takes them from the madhouse of Bedlam to the squalid confines of Newgate prison and back to the Tower itself, Newton and Ellis discover that the counterfeiting is only a small part of a larger, more dangerous plot, one that reaches to the highest echelons of power and nobility and threatens much more than the collapse of the economy. Dark Matter is the lastest masterwork of suspense from Philip Kerr, the internationally bestselling and brilliantly innovative thriller writer who has dazzled readers with his imaginative, fast-paced novels. Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and Kerr’s own Berlin Noir trilogy, Dark Matter is historical mystery at its finest, an extraordinary, suspense-filled journey through the shadowy streets and back alleys of London with the brilliant Newton and his faithful protégé. The haunted Tower with its bloody history is the perfect backdrop for this richly satisfying tale, one that introduces an engrossing mystery into the volatile mix of politics, science, and religion that characterized life in seventeenth-century London.
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"This book really kept my attention. There were a lot of people to try and keep straight the relationship between them all but it was a very entertaining read. " — Tobi (4 out of 5 stars)
"This book really kept my attention. There were a lot of people to try and keep straight the relationship between them all but it was a very entertaining read. "
" Sir Issac Newton must solve the murders, but his reasoning reminds me of Sherlock Holmes. The mystery was good, didn't like the rest of the story or the characters. "
" Kerr is one of the best authors around. Another winner. "
" This book was quite dry. Sherlock Holmes is a bit too obviously the model for Isaac Newton in this book. I found the similarities in style distracting. "
" A clever Crichton-esque period piece that blurs history and fiction, but it gets somewhat crude at times and veers in a few random directions "
" I really loved this author's trilogy, "Berlin Noir." But this book, a fictional story involving Sir Isaac Newton, though well-written, dragged. "
Philip Kerr (1956–2018) was the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Bernie Gunther novels, three of which—Field Gray, The Lady from Zagreb, and Prussian Blue—were finalists for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Kerr also won several Shamus Awards and the British Crime Writers’ Association Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction. In 2009, If the Dead Rise Not won the world’s most lucrative crime fiction award, the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing worth €125,000. The book also won the 2009 British Crime Writers’ Association’s Ellis Peters Historic Crime Award. In 2018, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Writing as P. B. Kerr, he was the author of the much-loved young-adult fantasy series Children of the Lamp.
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.
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