by RobertGoddard (Author)
It is January 1721. London is reeling from the effects of the greatest financial scandal of the age, the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. William Spandrel, a penniless mapmaker, is offered a discharge of his debts by his principal creditor, Sir Theodore Janssen, a director of the South Sea Company, on one condition: he must secretly convey an important package to a friend of Janssen's, Ysbrand de Vries, in Amsterdam. The package safely delivered, Spandrel barely survives an attempt on his life, only to be blamed for the murder of de Vries himself. When de Vries's secretary, his English wife and the package itself go missing shortly afterwards, Spandrel realizes that he has become a pawn in several people's games. British Government agents, and others, are on his trail, believing that the mysterious package contained secret details of the great South Sea scandal - secrets so explosive that their publication could spark a revolution in England. Spandrel's only chance of survival is to recover the package and place its contents in the right hands. But whose are the right hands? And what exactly are the contents? .
Format: Paperback
Pages: 480
Edition: 1st Corgi Edition
Publisher: Corgi
Published: 03 Dec 2001
ISBN 10: 0552146021
ISBN 13: 9780552146029
Book Overview: Robert Goddard takes us to eighteenth-century London, Amsterdam and Rome for a spell-binding mystery involving a mysterious package, murder and financial scandal.