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Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton: A Novel Kindle Edition
1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London, but not as a prisoner. Though Ellis is notoriously hotheaded and was caught fighting an illegal duel, he arrives at the Tower as assistant to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is Warden of the Royal Mint, which resides within the Tower walls, and he has accepted an appointment from the King of England and Parliament to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten to bring down the shaky, war-weakened economy. Ellis may lack Newton’s scholarly mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves himself to be an invaluable sidekick and devoted apprentice to Newton as they zealously pursue these criminals.
While Newton and Ellis investigate a counterfeiting ring, they come upon a mysterious coded message on the body of a man killed in the Lion Tower, as well as alchemical symbols that indicate this was more than just a random murder. Despite Newton’s formidable intellect, he is unable to decipher the cryptic message or any of the others he and Ellis find as the body count increases within the Tower complex. As they are drawn into a wild pursuit of the counterfeiters that takes them from the madhouse of Bedlam to the squalid confines of Newgate prison and back to the Tower itself, Newton and Ellis discover that the counterfeiting is only a small part of a larger, more dangerous plot, one that reaches to the highest echelons of power and nobility and threatens much more than the collapse of the economy.
Dark Matter is the lastest masterwork of suspense from Philip Kerr, the internationally bestselling and brilliantly innovative thriller writer who has dazzled readers with his imaginative, fast-paced novels. Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and Kerr’s own Berlin Noir trilogy, Dark Matter is historical mystery at its finest, an extraordinary, suspense-filled journey through the shadowy streets and back alleys of London with the brilliant Newton and his faithful protégé. The haunted Tower with its bloody history is the perfect backdrop for this richly satisfying tale, one that introduces an engrossing mystery into the volatile mix of politics, science, and religion that characterized life in seventeenth-century London.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateApril 19, 2010
- File size14898 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“[A] sly and serious writer.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Kerr has the talent to convey the big idea and to take you
places you have never been.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“A brilliantly innovative thriller writer.”
—Salman Rushdie
“[Kerr] makes the brain cells as well as the hairs on
the back of the neck tingle.”
—GQ magazine
“One of the best crime novelists in the world.”
—The Globe and Mail (London)
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Inside Flap
1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London, but not as a prisoner. Though Ellis is notoriously hotheaded and was caught fighting an illegal duel, he arrives at the Tower as assistant to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is Warden of the Royal Mint, which resides within the Tower walls, and he has accepted an appointment from the King of England and Parliament to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten to bring down the shaky, war-weakened economy. Ellis may lack Newton s scholarly mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves himself to be an invaluable sidekick and devoted apprentice to Newton as they zealously pursue these criminals.
While Newton and Ellis investigate a counterfeiting ring, they come upon a mysterious coded message on the body of a man killed in the Lion Tower, as well as alchemical symbols that indicate this was more than just a random murder. Despite Newton s formidable intellect, he is unable to decipher the cryptic message or any of the others he and Ellis find as the body count increases within the Tower complex. As they are drawn into a wild pursuit of the counterfeiters that takes them from the madhouse of Bedlam to the squalid confines of Newgate prison and back to the Tower itself, Newton and Ellis discover that the counterfeiting is only a small part of a larger, more dangerous plot, one that reaches to the highest echelons of power and nobility and threatens much more than the collapse of the economy.
Dark Matter is the lastest masterwork of suspense from Philip Kerr, the internationally bestselling and brilliantly innovative thriller writer who has dazzled readers with his imaginative, fast-paced novels. Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Name of the Rose, and Kerr s own Berlin Noir trilogy, Dark Matter is historical mystery at its finest, an extraordinary, suspense-filled journey through the shadowy streets and back alleys of London with the brilliant Newton and his faithful protégé. The haunted Tower with its bloody history is the perfect backdrop for this richly satisfying tale, one that introduces an engrossing mystery into the volatile mix of politics, science, and religion that characterized life in seventeenth-century London.
From the Back Cover
“[A] sly and serious writer.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Kerr has the talent to convey the big idea and to take you
places you have never been.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“A brilliantly innovative thriller writer.”
—Salman Rushdie
“[Kerr] makes the brain cells as well as the hairs on
the back of the neck tingle.”
—GQ magazine
“One of the best crime novelists in the world.”
—The Globe and Mail (London)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
(Isaiah 60:19)
On Thursday, November the fifth, 1696, most people went to church. But I went to fight a duel.
Gunpowder Day was then a cause for Protestant celebration twice over: this had been the day, in 1605, when King James I had been delivered from a Roman Catholic plot to blow up the Parliament; and, in 1688, it had also been the day when the Prince of Orange had landed at Torbay to deliver the Church of England from the oppressive hand of another Stuart, the Catholic King James II. Many Gunpowder Day sermons were preached throughout the City, and I would have done well to have listened to one of them, for a little consideration of heavenly deliverance might have helped me to channel my anger against Papist tyranny instead of the man who had impugned my honour. But my blood was up and, my head being full of fighting, I and my second walked to the World's End Tavern in Knightsbridge where we had a slice of beef and a glass of Rhenish for breakfast, and thence to Hyde Park, to meet my opponent, Mister Shayer, who was already waiting with his own second.
Shayer was an ugly-looking fellow, whose tongue was too big for his mouth so that he lisped like a little child when he spoke, and I regarded him as I would have regarded a mad dog. I no longer remember what our dispute was about, except to say that I was a quarrelsome sort of young man and very likely there was fault on both sides.
No apologies were solicited and none proffered and straightaway all four of us threw off our coats and fell to with swords. I had some skill with the weapon, having been trained by Mister Figg in the Oxford Road, but there was little or no finesse in this fight and, in truth, I made short work of the matter, wounding Shayer in the left pap which, being close to his heart, placed the poor fellow in mortal fear of his life, and me in fear of prosecution, for duelling was against the law since 1666. Most gentlemen fighting paid but little heed to the legal consequences of their actions; however, Mister Shayer and myself were both at Gray's Inn, acquainting ourselves with a tincture of English law, and our quarrel was quickly the cause of a scandal that obliged my leaving off a career at the Bar, permanently.
It was perhaps no great loss to the legal profession, for I had little interest in the Law; and even less aptitude, for I had only gone to the Bar to please my late father who always had a great respect for that profession. And yet what else could I have done? We were not a rich family, but not without some connections, either. My elder brother, Charles Ellis, who later became an MP, was then the under-secretary to William Lowndes, who was himself the Permanent Secretary to the First Lord of the Treasury. The Treasurer, until his recent resignation, had been Lord Godolphin. Several months later the King named as Godolphin's replacement the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Montagu, to whom Isaac Newton owed his appointment as Warden of the Royal Mint in May 1696.
My brother told me that until Newton's arrival in the position, there had been few if any duties that were attached to the Wardenship; and Newton had taken the position in expectation of receiving the emolument for not much work; but that the Great Recoinage had given the office a greater importance than hitherto it had enjoyed; and that Newton was obliged to be the principal agent of the coin's protection.
In truth it was sore in need of protecting for it had become much debased of late. The only true money of the realm was the silver coin-for there was little if ever much gold about-which constituted sixpences, shillings, half-crowns and crowns; but until the great and mechanised recoinage, mostly this was hand-struck with an ill-defined rim that lent itself to clipping or filing. Except for a parcel of coin struck after the Restoration, none of the coin in circulation was more recent than the Civil War, while a great quantity had been issued by Queen Elizabeth.
Fate took a hand to drive the coinage further out of order when, after William and Mary came to the throne, the price of gold and silver became greatly increased, so that there was much more than a shilling's worth of silver in a shilling. Or at least there ought to have been. A new-struck shilling weighed ninety-three grains, although with the price of silver increasing all the time it need only have weighed seventy-seven grains; and even more vexing was that with the coin so worn and thin, and rubbed with age, and clipped and filed, a shilling often weighed as little fifty grains. Because of this, people were inclined to hoard the new coin and refuse the old.
The Recoinage Act had passed through the Parliament in January 1696, although this only chafed the sore, the Parliament having been imprudent enough to damn the old money before ensuring that there existed sufficient supplies of the new. And throughout the summer-if that was what it was, the weather being so bad-money had remained in such short supply that tumults every day were feared. For without good money how were men to be paid, and how was bread to be bought? If all that was not subversion enough, to this sum of calamity was added the fraud of the bankers and the goldsmiths who, having got immense treasures by extortion, hoarded their bullion in expectation of its advancing in value. To say nothing of the banks that every day were set up, or failed, besides an intolerable amount of taxation on everything save female bodies and an honest, smiling countenance, of which there were few if any to be seen. Indeed there was such a want of public spirit anywhere that the Nation seemed to sink under so many calamities.
Much aware of my sudden need for a position and Doctor Newton's equally sudden need for a clerk, Charles prevailed upon Lord Montagu to consider advancing me in Newton's favour for employment, and this despite our not having the fondness which we used and ought to have as brothers. And by and by, it was arranged that I should go to Doctor Newton's house in Jermyn Street to recommend myself to him.
I remember the day well, for there was a hard frost and a report of more Catholic plots against the King, and a great search for Jacobites was already under way. But I do not remember that Newton's reputation had made much of an impression upon my young mind; for, unlike Newton, who was a Cambridge Professor, I was an Oxford man and, although I knew the classics, I could no more have disputed any general mathematical system, let alone one affecting the universe, than I could have discoursed upon the nature of a spectrum. I was aware only that Newton was, like Mister Locke and Sir Christopher Wren, one of the most learned men in England, although I could not have said why: cards were my reading then and pretty girls my scholarly pursuit-for I had studied women closely; and I was as skilled in the use of sword and pistol as some are with a sextant and a pair of dividers. In short, I was as ignorant as a jury unable to find a verdict. And yet, of late-especially since leaving my inn of court-my ignorance had begun to weigh upon me.
Jermyn Street was a recently completed and quite fashionable suburb of Westminster, with Newton's house toward the western and better end, close by St. James's Church. At eleven o'clock I presented myself at Doctor Newton's door, was admitted by a servant and ushered into a room with a good fire in it, where Newton sat awaiting my arrival upon a red chair with a red cushion and a red morocco-bound book. Newton did not wear a wig and I saw that his hair was grey but that his teeth were all his own and good for a man of his age. He wore a crimson shag gown trimmed with gold buttons and I also remember that he had a blister or issue upon his neck that troubled him a little. The room was all red, as if a smallpox victim did sometimes lie in it, for it is said that this colour draws out the infection. It was well furnished with several landscapes upon the red walls and a fine globe that occupied a whole corner by the window, as if this room was all the universe there was and he the god in it, for he struck me as a most wise-looking man. His nose was all bridge, as across the Tiber, and his eyes which were quiet in repose became as sharp as bodkins the minute his brow furrowed under the concentration of a thought or a question. His mouth looked fastidious, as if he lacked appetite and humour, and his dimpled chin was on the edge of finding itself joined by a twin. And when he spoke, he spoke with an accent I should incorrectly have supposed to be Norfolk but now know to have been Lincolnshire, for he was born near Grantham. That day I met him first he was just a month or so short of his fifty-fourth birthday.
"It is not my manner," he said, "to speak anything that is extraneous to my business. So let me come straight to the point, Mister Ellis. When I became Warden of His Majesty's Mint I little thought that my life should become taken up with the detection, pursuit and punishment of coiners, clippers and coun-
terfeiters. But that being my discovery, I wrote to the Treasury Committee to the effect that such matters were the proper province of the Solicitor General and that if it were possible, to let this cup pass from me. Their Lordships willed it otherwise, however, and therefore I must stand the course. Indeed, I have made this matter my own personal crusade, for if the Great Recoinage does not succeed, I fear that we shall lose this war with the French and the whole kingdom shall be undone. God knows I have, these past six months, in my own person done my full duty, I am sure. But the business of my taking these rascals is so great, there being so many of them, I find I have sore need of a clerk to assist me in my duties.
"But I want no truckle-head milksop in my service. God knows what disorders we may fall into and whether any violence ma...
Product details
- ASIN : B003FCVEY6
- Publisher : Crown; Reprint edition (April 19, 2010)
- Publication date : April 19, 2010
- Language : English
- File size : 14898 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 333 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #929,151 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,436 in Historical Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #6,505 in Private Investigator Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- #6,511 in Historical Mysteries (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

For most novelists, the city where the action takes place is a backdrop or a stage set, nothing more than scenery. But the Berlin of Philip Kerr’s stories is a character in the books – a personality as complex and troubled as his private-investigator protagonist. ‘When I started writing I was after the character of the Berliner rather than the history of Berlin,’ says Kerr. ‘Berlin people have always been awkward-squad Germans, which is probably why I admire them. Hitler didn’t like them at all, and Berliners are the same now as then – they haven’t changed.’
Read more here: philipkerr.org/about
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Sir Issac Newton was truly a genius of his time and a ground-breaking thinker, a renaissance man in every sense of the word. The background facts concerning the coinage crisis of that time were extremely interesting, as was the handling of it.
The story revolves around a complex counterfeiting operation during the Great Recoinage, when old currency was being replaced by new silver coins, trust in the new currecny and its circulation of critical national importance. As the counterfeit ring is investigated, the conspirators begin to cover their tracks by murdering their low-level lackys; further investigation shows that there may be much more than counterfeiting going on, with much higher stakes and more sinister objectives.
Kerr is a very talented writer, who can spin a complex story that is both convincing to readers as well as be broadly historically plausible. He does so here. Yet I struggled with the stylistic decisions he made in his telling of the story - as enjoyable as it was uncovering the plot(s), Kerr's narrator writes in a style that is strongly reminiscent of the early 18th century. While this makes sense and lends an air of authenticity, the syntax was a bit odd to the ear and sometimes (although not often) was a bit laborious. In terms of the story, its larger historical context, and the characters, the book warrants 5 stars. The wit of Newton (and the street-smarts of Ellis) make for enjoyable "odd-couple" banter, and the blending of science, religion, social class and political intrigue was very well done. In spite of my issues with Ellis' voice, I'm certain fans of historical fiction would enjoy _Dark Matter_. If you liked _The Name of the Rose_, you are sure to want to read this as well.
I liked the book for a summer's read, but I prefer the Bernie Gunther novels overall.
Top reviews from other countries
Philip Kerr has taken this Newton and his assistant, and turned them into Holmes and Watson, placing them at the centre of a serious intrigue involving financial crimes, political battles and religious atrocities.
It's a brilliant period piece which explains a great deal I didn't understand about Restoration Europe. Like his other historical novels Kerr has also carefully used the language of the time, writing in a style reminiscent of Newton's contemporaries such as Pepys, but always readily understandable.
Some of the period detail is quite gruesome, and can be little uncomfortable. This is not a book for the young or seriously squeamish. However the content is appropriate given the quite dark nature of the story.
I haven't enjoyed all of Kerr's more recent works. For example "The Shot", which was a similar kind of period piece, was just too complicated. I have no such complaints about "Dark Matter" - a brilliant historical thriller.
And yet, and yet... somehow this story never really gripped me as I expected it to. Is it because of the language? Maybe so, because I found it to be written almost as if it wasn't only about Newton but also BY Newton, with everything described in a very detached, almost scientific way which doesn't help to get one involved in the story.
So however eagerly I read the book (somehow always expecting it to start living up to my expectations) I finished it with mixed feelings (because it never really did).





