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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 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 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 received 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.… (more)
User reviews
Unfortunately, I'm a sucker for this type of novel. It's my guilty pleasure because it's the antithesis of the life I live, happily sitting in my papasan chair, sipping coffee, and reading book after book after book. The idea that I could be out there, saving the day, with my literary knowledge and rapier wit, is just fun. Impractical. Impossible. And did I mention fun?
However, while this is admittedly the reading equivalent of sitting down and inhaling a bag of chips and then feeling guilty later, I do have some requirements for this type of book. It has to be fast-paced, it has to be clever, it has to know its topic well (I don't mind when the narrative digresses to cleverly teach me something I did not know before), and it has to have, if we're to continue with the potato chip analogy, some texture, some flavor, some crunch. Don't hand me a bag of plain potato chips when I know that I could have a bag of cheddar-bacon-sour cream-barbecue-nacho-chicken and waffles (yeah, apparently that is a chip flavor)-smokehouse ribs-ultra-maximum-loaded-flavor-explosion. If I'm going to feel guilty later, might as well go balls out now.
Alas, The Intelligencer is a bag of plain potato chips. Silbert knows her subject well and sprinkles interesting historical tidbits throughout the novel, but everything else is just bland. Bland characters, bland dialogue, and a bland mystery. The novel consists of two alternating plot lines: one set in Elizabethan England and one set in present day New York. In Elizabethan England, playwright Christopher Marlowe lives a double life as a spy for his country, a plot which parallels that of present day Kate Morgan, grad student turned private investigator. Marlowe investigates a smuggling operation that could put his life in danger; Kate investigates a shady art dealer while also looking into the appearance of a strange book chronicling secret intel from Queen Elizabeth's own spy network. We can also assume her life will be in danger and that these two narratives will eventually converge with the present day Kate unraveling the shocking truth behind Marlowe's death (not a spoiler since Marlowe's death has always been presented as mysterious).
The alternating plotline seems unnecessary as the one about Marlowe is far superior and more interesting. The interruptions by Kate in the present day slow down the narrative and lessen the tension created in Marlowe's world. The characters are stock and their dialogue is clumsy. Kate Morgan also seems to be a carbon copy of the author, Leslie Silbert--even the way Kate is described matches Silbert's author photo. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but I kept feeling as though I was just peering into Silbert's daydream, starring herself, and daydreams are only interesting to the person conjuring them up.
Ultimately, there was not enough to keep my interest and I stopped reading somewhere around page 100. Perhaps the mystery eventually picked up steam to carry the novel through to the end, but nothing I had read up to that point convinced me it would be worth my time to finish. Besides, I have much tastier offerings awaiting me on my bookshelves and, damn it, now I want a bag of chips.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder
The plot is complicated, yet somehow it works, at least for me. All three story lines progressed at the same pace and held my attention equally. A Renaissance scholar turned private investigator sounds far-fetched, yet it mirrors the author's own career path. Silbert followed the often-heard advice for authors, "write about what you know". The events that take place are unlikely, but not completely unbelievable.
The book reads like it's the first book in a series. The events in the story have the potential to affect several of the heroine's relationships. It seems like the author intends to continue those relationship threads in a subsequent book. Both the author's and publisher's Web sites say that the author is working on a second novel about the artist Caravaggio, but the author's Web site hasn't been updated in a long time. I liked The Intelligencer well enough to hope that the second novel will be published eventually.
Meanwhile, a private investigator
I read this book on an airplane, and it is definitely a page turner with a few suprising plot twists. However, it is not particularly well written, and there were several cringe-inducing sentences. The alternating plots and historical periods keep the story fresh and very readable.
Speculation, of course.
Reader, my fingers trembled as I opened it.
And of course I was disappointed; but I was surprised by just quite how disappointed I was. The book isn't extraordinarily bad — please don't get that impression. It's just, well, flat. Silbert writes with the earnest worthiness of someone who's subscribed to one or two creative-writing correspondence courses too many. The result is that, while the words seem all to be there and in roughly the correct order, there's no conviction at all in the telling of her tale. I never caught a single whiff of 16th-century London, nor even of modern London and New York City, where the "present-day" strand is located.
It was a terrible pity, because Silbert clearly did her research and had lots of interesting ingredients to throw into the stewpot. Maybe it'll all work better next time.
Marlowe was a contemporary of Walsingham as well as Shakespeare, and was in addition a spy for the Elizabethan crown, it's generally accepted that he was in Walsingham's pay. Although by the time of The Intelligencer, Walsingham is dead and Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his son, are mostly in charge of the Elizabethan spy apparatus.
The Intelligencer is a two-timeline mystery, pairing Marlowe's exploits and life with the adventures of Kate Morgan, a private investigator, who in fact works for a CIA front organization. The common thread is the discovery of a book containing Walsingham's most valuable secrets. In Marlowe's time, the hunt for the book is on. When a modern day researcher discovers the book, events are set in motion linking the two timelines.
The Intelligencer is good fun if you are at all interested in Elizabethan times, especially in regards the theater or the spy world or both. It's readily accessible, although having just read The Queen's Agent, a biography of Walsingham, I was well prepared for the historical side of it. Best of all, since I'd read it 12 years ago, I'd forgotten the ending and the bad guy for most of the book, so it was a good read the second time too!