The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

If you love books, you are going to love this entry into a relatively new genre – the literary thriller. It begins as Jake Mishkin, a New York intellectual property lawyer, son of a Jewish mobster, disappointed actor, Olympic weight-lifter, and rake about town is typing out his story as he waits in a remote cabin for his probable killers - a story that began with the discovery of some supposedly 17th century documents in some damaged rare books. Carolyn Rolly, a gorgeous and mysterious amateur bookbinder is helped in defrauding the bookshop owner of the documents by Albert Crosetti, a computer technician and film history buff. Their find is the 1642 letter of a certain Bracegirdle, a gunner mortally wounded in an English Civil War battle and writing to his wife so that she may tell their small son the story of his father’s life. The letter purports to reveal the existence of an hitherto unknown play by William Shakespeare. Along with the letter there are some other sheets written in cipher. Realizing that the letter alone will set the literary and academic world on its ear and is worth a countless amount of money, but that they cannot honestly claim ownership of it, Carolyn and Crosetti quickly sell the manuscript to a disgraced Shakespearean scholar. The deal is shady at the least. At the last moment Crosetti succeeds in making a copy of the letter and concealing the existence of the ciphered sheets. Both copy and sheets he keeps for himself. He hopes to decipher the sheets, which he supposes contain the actual location of the lost play. The actual play would be even more priceless than a document referring to it.

If you love books about codes and puzzles you will truly enjoy this book. There is a great deal of technical detail revealed as Crosetti, his mother, a retired librarian, and her friends try to break the cipher.

If you love thrillers and flights to and fro across the Atlantic to the capitals of Europe in private jets, you won’t be able to put this book down. Jake the lawyer gets involved when the Shakespeare scholar lodges the document with him for safekeeping. Very shortly after that the police inform Jake that his client has been tortured to death. Jake is also quickly visited by another mysterious and alluring girl who says she is the scholar’s heir, and by a terrifying Russian gangster who says he is the true owner of the document. Unfortunately, Jake has allowed the document to disappear with the girl, who appears to be a fraud. To save his reputation and his life Jake teams up with Crosetti to find the lost play. Their two accounts of what happens, together with the account of Bracegirdle’s life, add up to increase the complexity of the plot.

If you enjoy plot twists and doubling back you will more than appreciate this convoluted story. You will think you can see where things are leading; but you won’t know what is truly happening until the last page, and even then you may not be sure!