The Intelligencer

From Publishers Weekly
Silbert brings hands-on experience as a private eye to her entertaining debut thriller, which shifts deftly between the present and the late 16th century. In 1593 Christopher Marlowe, temporarily bereft of his artistic muse, takes on his final espionage assignment for the nascent intelligence agencies of the time-a smuggling case that may involve high-level individuals. In contemporary New York, Kate Morgan, English Renaissance scholar turned PI, is directed by her firm-which doubles as an undercover U.S. intelligence unit-to look into the attempted burglary from the home of a dashing London financial whiz of a leather-bound volume of 16th-century intelligence reports written in cipher. As she begins to decode the yellowed pages of the old volume, she is about to discover the truth behind Marlowe's sudden and puzzling death. Meanwhile, a mysterious Italian multimillionaire, who has had run-ins with Kate's father, a U.S. senator, is plotting his revenge. Even at its most belief-straining moments (and there are more than a few), the tale moves at a refreshing clip, and Silbert provides plenty of engaging back-story about Elizabethan history, ciphers, Iranian jails, the poison of the Australian blue-ringed octopus and much more.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School--This page-turner, albeit somewhat cluttered, alternates between the present and the England of Elizabeth I and Christopher Marlowe. In addition to being a skilled and popular playwright, Marlowe was a spy, or intelligencer, for both Cecil and Essex, rivals for the favor of the Queen. Kate Morgan, a present-day Renaissance scholar working as a PI for a former agent still working clandestinely for the government, takes on a case involving a bound collection of coded reports of intelligencers gathered by an employee of Cecil, Essex, and others. The trail of the manuscript and its codes intersects with modern investigations involving murders, a crooked but charming art dealer, a charming but devious entrepreneur, a captured spy, Iranian prisons, Kate's father, a U.S. senator, and the current CIA director. There are a lot of strands, but the pace is quick and the action fascinating. Readers are introduced to elements of torture from both time periods as well as the newest spy devices known or imagined. Carried along by the action and the mysteries of both eras, teens will find themselves painlessly picking up details of Elizabethan life and modern political particulars. Silbert includes a useful author's note delineating the facts and fiction of her tale and what is known of Marlowe's death, as well as a cast of characters from both periods indicating which of those from Marlowe's time are fictional. This is a fun mystery with bonuses.--Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
"Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight," cries the chorus at the finish of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. They were referring to the good doctor, but maybe they had Marlowe in mind, too. Here was a devilishly successful poet and playmaker who would soon be struck down in the prime of his career -- leaving the field clear for a certain bumpkin from Stratford. It might have been a rivalry for the ages, but now Shakespeare is for the ages, and Marlowe, his exact contemporary, is largely for the English majors (although "Edward II" is must viewing for anyone interested in the harsher uses of pokers).Kit did have at least one advantage over Will: a gruesome death, agreeably wreathed in mystery. On the night of May 30, 1593, according to historical record, Marlowe was dining with three acquaintances at Dame Eleanor Bull's establishment when a quarrel broke out over the bill. One thing led to another, push led to shove, and shove led to Marlowe lying dead with a dagger in his eye socket. The coroner was satisfied, but later generations of scholars couldn't help noticing that Marlowe's three companions were all secret agents and that Marlowe himself was, by most accounts, a part-time spy. Presto! A cottage industry of conspiracy theories, with rival theorists ready to splash blood on any historical figure within 20 miles of Dame Bull's.Into that forever unresolvable controversy steps Leslie Silbert, whose new novel, The Intelligencer, twines a modern-day espionage thriller around a reconstruction of Marlowe's final days. According to Silbert's fictional scenario, our Kit was tasked with investigating underhanded doings in the Muscovy Company, a group of merchants looking to find a Northeast Passage to the Orient. Marlowe's findings were coded into a secret document that, four centuries later, ends up in the hands of Kate Morgan, a young American detective working for a covert-ops outfit. Kate has to decode the original message and figure out where Marlowe buried a certain priceless jade dragon before a certain murderous someone finds it. She also has to keep tabs on a shadowy Italian art dealer named Luca de Tolomei, who just got a shipment from Iran that could be the undoing of Kate's father, a U.S. senator with secrets of his own. Oh, and she has to fend off the amorous advances of a Spanish-English playboy named Cidro Medina.Fortunately, Kate's got an arsenal that would make James Bond whimper: black eyeglasses with a concealed iris scanner, an underwire bra-cum-audio recorder, and a tube of lipstick that emits a single 4.5-millimeter bullet. She's also equipped with a thorough grounding in Elizabethan history, which means that, if nothing else, The Intelligencer offers a vigorous tutorial in the brutality that flourished under the Virgin Queen -- not to mention disquisitions on Copernicus and Galileo and cameo appearances by Walter Ralegh, a saucy barmaid named Ambrosia and England's pre-eminent torturer, Richard Topcliffe, who reputedly screamed the Queen's name while raping prisoners. The Da Vinci Code, it seems, has made thrillers safe for ceaseless pedagogy. And it's a measure of Silbert's skill that she can keep all these undergraduate seminars moving and still spin out reams and reams of plot -- enough for three Robert Ludlum books. Inevitably, things get squeezed in the process: a rather pallid love story, for instance, between Marlowe and a cross-dressing babe named Helen. (For the record, many scholars think Marlowe was gay.) Nuance, too: Kate is the usual doughty hottie, and villains tend to declare themselves by flashing their snakelike eyes and toying with the ends of their mustaches .Unlike, say, Sarah Waters or Arturo Perez-Reverte, Silbert hasn't devised a high style to match her high-culture concept. The prose is no more than serviceable (except when risible: Get a load of that toe-sucking servant girl who tells the Earl of Essex, "My lord, I . . . I must have you soon"). And at times, there's precious little to separate the diction of 21st-century frequent fliers from that of 16th-century mead sippers. Steering clear of archaisms is one thing, but putting expressions like "a big deal" or "All right. But not tonight" in the mouths of Elizabeth I's subjects is another. And surely the great Marlowe knew better than to commit such solecisms as "from whence" when communicating with the Queen. So, all right, Leslie Silbert never rises above her chosen genre, but she has certainly met its specifications to the letter: multiple locales, rat-a-tat pacing, and a plot that springs a history-bending surprise while leaving just enough loose ends to necessitate a sequel, if not a whole series. In future installments, Kate may be expected to get retinal scans on the true author of Shakespeare's plays, the squatting figure who harassed Henry James Sr., and the guy from Porlock who broke up Coleridge's train of thought. Perhaps she'll even apply her talents to the enigmas of contemporary literature. Who is the real culprit behind James Patterson's books? And what will happen when Sue Grafton runs out of alphabet? Reviewed by Louis BayardCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From AudioFile
If you can accept the premise that a modern private detective's life might be in danger because of a secret she uncovers about sixteenth-century Christopher Marlowe, then you'll have fun with this book. Admittedly, the abridgment is necessarily cut-to-the-chase, leaving little room for story development. In his silky English baritone, Alfred Molina gives a nuanced, fine-tuned reading of the sections of the book about Marlowe, which are set in sixteenth-century England. Jan Maxwell reads the present-day part of the story about American private eye Kate Morgan in a pleasant, well-enunciated American voice. She uses a quick edge-of-your-seat style appropriate to the hard-boiled writing used in the modern sections. The problem is that the two fine narrators unintentionally emphasize the book's uneven writing--the moody tone of historical England doesn't mesh well with the fast, tough tone of 21st-century America. Too bad. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
"Fascinating...if you liked The Da Vinci Code, you'll love The Intelligencer." -- David Morrell

"Delightfully literate...a crackling good page-turner." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

FROM THE PUBLISHER

On May 30, 1593, London's most popular playwright was stabbed to death. The royal coroner ruled that Christopher Marlowe was killed in self-defense, but historians have long suspected otherwise, given his role as an "intelligencer" in the queen's secret service.

In sixteenth-century London, Marlowe embarks on his final intelligence assignment, hoping to find his missing muse, as well as the culprits behind a high-stakes smuggling scheme.

In present-day New York, grad student turned private eye Kate Morgan is called in on an urgent matter. One of her firm's top clients, a London-based financier, has chanced upon a mysterious manuscript that had been buried for centuries - one that someone, somewhere is desperate to steal. What secret lurks in those yellowed, ciphered pages? And how, so many years later, could it drive someone to kill?" As Kate sets off for England, she receives a second assignment. An enigmatic art dealer has made an eleven-million-dollar purchase from an Iranian intelligence officer. Is it a black-market antiquities deal, or something far more sinister? Like Marlowe, Kate moonlights as a spy - her P.I. firm doubles as an off-the-books U.S. Intelligence unit - and she is soon caught like a pawn in a deadly international game. As the Intelligencer's interlocking narratives race toward a stunning collision, and Kate closes in on the truth behind Marlowe's sudden death, it becomes clear that she may have sealed a similar fate for herself.

FROM THE CRITICS

Gayle Lynds - Masquerade, Mesmerized

From London to New York, from Elizabethan times to our new millennium, The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert bursts onto the literary scene with an unforgettable tale of espionage and high-level politics played across time and continents. A vigorous and daring writer and thinker, Silbert is an exciting addition to the growing ranks of female thriller authors. Make sure your electric bill is paid. You'll be up all night reading!

Jack Devine - former Acting Deputy Director of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency

An artful and ingenious blend of Elizabethan history and 21st century espionage by a gifted and insightful observer of the age-old dark side of intelligence.

Mark T. Sullivan - author of The Serpent's Kiss

The Intelligencer is an impressive and fascinating debut spy thriller, interweaving the secret espionage life of the 16th century playwright Christopher Marlowe with that of present-day Kate Morgan, a private investigator with a penchant for international intrigue. With a blistering pace, well-drawn characters and an intricate plot, it will keep you guessing until the very end. Leslie Silbert is a writer to watch.

David Liss - author of A Conspiracy of Paper and The Coffee Trader

It is rare to find a novel that is both impressively learned and absorbingly entertaining. Leslie Silbert does a remarkable job of presenting fascinating details from the world of espionage - both Tudor and contemporary - and weaving them into a fast-paced, engaging and witty thriller.

Publishers Weekly