Lord Chamberlain John spends his days counseling Emperor Justinian while passing the small hours of night in conversation with the solemn-eyed little girl depicted in a mosaic on his study wall. He never expected to meet her in a public square or afterwards find her red-dyed corpse in a subterranean cistern. Had the mysterious woman truly been the model for the mosaic years before as she claimed? Why had she sought John out? Who wanted her dead—and why? The answers seem to lie among the denizens of the smoky streets of the quarter of Constantinople known as the Copper Market, where artisans, beggars, prostitutes, pillar saints, and exiled aristocrats struggle to survive within sight of the Great Palace. Before long John suspects he is attempting to unravel not just a murder but a plot against the empire. Is there such a thing as truth in a place where people live on memories, dreams, and illusions?
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Sixth-century Constantinople-the capital of the Byzantine empire and the forerunner to modern Istanbul-is a mysterious and perilous city as the eunuch John, the Lord Chamberlain of the Emperor Justinian, well knows. In his seventh adventure (after Six for Gold), John finds the brutally murdered corpse of a young woman who had identified herself to him as a model for a mosaic he keeps in his study and who was about to give him some vital information. Discovering what that secret was takes John, walking a fine line between maintaining his loyalty to his emperor and searching for the truth, on a twisting route to a very dangerous ending. The authors get everything right in their latest historical. The story is fast paced, the tensions between characters well portrayed; the ending leaves the reader clamoring for more. -- Library Journal (2/2/2008)
--This text refers to an alternate
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Sixth-century Constantinople-the capital of the Byzantine empire and the forerunner to modern Istanbul-is a mysterious and perilous city as the eunuch John, the Lord Chamberlain of the Emperor Justinian, well knows. In his seventh adventure (after Six for Gold), John finds the brutally murdered corpse of a young woman who had identified herself to him as a model for a mosaic he keeps in his study and who was about to give him some vital information. Discovering what that secret was takes John, walking a fine line between maintaining his loyalty to his emperor and searching for the truth, on a twisting route to a very dangerous ending. The authors get everything right in their latest historical. The story is fast paced, the tensions between characters well portrayed; the ending leaves the reader clamoring for more. -- Library Journal (2/2/2008)
About the Author
The husband and wife team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer began writing together in 1992. After publishing several short stories in anthologies and in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, their first full length novel appeared in 1999.
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