The Book of Spies

by Gayle Lynds

Book Overview

For centuries, emperors, historians, and even the Vatican have tried to locate Ivan the Terrible's magnificent Library of Gold -- a long-missing archive containing gold-covered, bejeweled books dating... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312946082
• ISBN13: 9780312946081
• Release Date: March 2011
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 529 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 4.2" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

An excellent thriller

This work reestablishes Gayle Lynds as a, if not the, preeminent thriller writer, one who can combine non-stop action and suspense with historical depth. The story line develops from what is supposed to have been Ivan the Terrible's Library of Gold--an actual collection, now believed to have been lost. But: The bad guys have it and want to use the wealth it generates to aggrandize their own, world-wide power. The good guys (here, the CIA) want to prevent the bad guys from exercising the means to that power, i.e. terrorism. The historical roots of the story recalls Dan Brown's historical style, but the story telling is better because it doesn't employ Brown's artificial, edge-of-the-cliff device at the end of each chapter to propel the reader on. The story generates its own momentum. And the prose is a delight.

Another Thriller Novel

It has been a while since The Last Spymaster, and we find outselves back in the world of international intrigue, black operations, moles, people with their own agendsa, and international financiers out to make their fortunes no matter how many broken bodies they leave in their wake. The Carnivore is back, and he has rules, even if other people do not. There are lots of stories about lost treasures. The Amber Room disappeared. In this case people are on the track of the Library of Gold, Ivan the Terrible's fabulous lost library. It is wrapped around a tale of intrigue, and powerful people are willing to kill to protect their secrets. A book from the library has surfaced, "The Book of Spies," and the hunt is on. A dangerous quest for the people involved.

QUEEN OF TODAY'S SPY THRILLERS

Chilling, breathtaking, moving, twisting, eye-opening, stimulating, nerve-wracking, entertaining, challenging, educating, action-packed . . . when it comes to a Gayle Lynds' spy thriller, whatever you can dream up in a literary ride of extreme fascination is what this author delivers. Her "what if" for this book's plot began with an article she read in the "Los Angeles Times " in 1989. Through the next 20 years plus, the mystery of Ivan the Terrible's lost library percolated in the back of her mind to become an obsession she called The Library of Gold. The more she researched it the more it absorbed her. Like Robert Ludlum's conspiratorial elite who lurked through many of his novels, the idea of such a rich and fabled library lent itself to another tale of hidden wealthy powerbrokers manipulating world events to their advantage. The CIA becomes involved when the father of one of its contract agents is murdered. In following up the victim's ties to an elite secret book club of the world's most powerful men, they discover a connection between the group's Library of Gold and a terrorist's bank account. To help, they engage Eva Blake, a rare books curator who has been wrongfully imprisoned for her husband's death. They release her. In the London Museum, while inspecting one of the "lost" books, she spots her husband alive. He turns on her and tries to kill her. Judd Ryder, assigned by the CIA to protect her, learns his recently assassinated father was a member of this secret book club, and in rescuing Eva joins forces with her in a hunt that takes them from London to Rome, Istanbul to Athens, and even into Afghanistan. Unlike "The Da Vinci Code," Gayle does not sacrifice pace to burden readers with heavy-handed history--that she contains in her Author's Notes at the end. Instead, she balances character development, plot, action and international settings with fine-tuned precision. In many current suspense and mystery novels, authors have abandoned the omniscient point of view, so it is a treat to return to the thriller master's technique of setting up each chapter from the long view of the camera to pan into the characters so we instantly see them and then of zooming into the close-up of the scene from the character's POV. In "Book of Spies," Gayle builds characters with idiosyncrasies that evolve from their legends. In this case, her heroine is Eva Blake, a museum curator who specializes in ancient manuscripts. To do such work, she must have a retentive memory and an analytic gift. For her to communicate with her husband in Latin phrases is an intellectual game such vibrant minds relish, if only to serve their own egos. That this becomes her instantaneous style of response is not outside the realm of possibility but rather her norm. She has trained her mind in competition with her husband to use Latin one-liners to express what she observes. That she comes from a poor background where she has learned to survive as a pickpocket only proves how c

The Book of Spies

The Book of Spies is an action pace thriller for book lovers alike. The opening start with a group of wealthy men in a historical library enjoying themselves by challenging the oldest member of the group the book curator to find and seek the title of a book as they put him to the test until murder occurs spinning the tale into a fast past who done it and why these collection of ancient manuscripts are so important to the CIA? A very stronger female lead Eva Blake a rare book curator wrongful accused of murder is released and assigned to invest the strange going on. Taking the reader through twist and turns of foreign travel was a delightful adventure.

One for your shelf....

Unquestionably, historical fiction is my favorite interest. That is why I look forward to books from author's like Steve Berry. I'm now adding Gayle Lynds to my list. The Book of Spies is based upon a legend that there exists a library of lost books, each which has been encased in gold and emblazed with fabulous jewels. Within this library are books of philosophy, religion, mathematics, engineering and other generes, all of which have been lost to history. In this story, the library has come under control of a cadre of the world's wealthiest men, nearly all of whom has made their riches thru knowledge gained from these books. In the long and the short, Eva Blake, an antiquities expert, is falsly accused of killing her husband... a fanatic engrossed in finding the library. His efforts ultimately lead him to becoming the Libary of Gold's head librarian. Within the library is the Book of Spies, a book supposed prepared by Russian czar and smuggled out of the library. It's discovery has convinced the CIA that there is a connection between the library and a terrorist plot of some sorts. Blake and others are recruited by the CIA to recover the book, find out where the library is located, and uncover how terrorists are involved. I found the book to have a group of believeable and interesting characters, and the plot and subplots to be well-developed. Unlike Berry, who has often left me shaking my head at the conclusion of his books, Lynds has done him a bit better by wrapping up her book nicely. I enjoyed the historical references, and especially appreciated the author's notes at the end of the book. I understand this is the first in a series of books featuring Blake and her entourage, and I look forward to the next.