Overview

April 1945: Europe is in ruins and Berlin is burning. As the Red Army closes in on the last few blocks surrounding the Fuhrerbunker, a famous aviatrix lands her light aircraft in the center of the shattered German capital. Two days later she takes off again. With her is a man called Heinrich Bechmann, SS mass killer and personal bodyguard of the German chancellor Adolf Hitler—and with Bechmann is a file of documents. Nearly a century later, in the spring of 2020, Pope Francis announces that he intends to open the Vatican Secret Archives to the public. A week later, masked gunmen kill five people at an isolated Jesuit retreat in the mountains of Sicily. And two weeks after that, the body of a celebrated British historian is discovered in a beach house on Long Island. Aiden Blake, ex-Royal Marine and brother of the dead historian, believes there is a mysterious link between these events, stretching across seventy-five years of history. He’s right—and history itself will provide the clues. The trail will lead him and his brother’s New York-based researcher, Hannah Harper, across the Atlantic to the hidden bunkers of Berlin, a Gothic castle in the South Tyrol, Rome, Sicily, and deep into the past in a bid to find his brother’s killers—and expose a neo-Fascist plot to kill the present Pope and replace him with one more conducive to the party’s own political views and ambitions.

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9781493067206

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Reviews

As a storyteller Bryers is superb --Time Out Praise for Bryer's Prayer of the Bone An elegant and unearthly literary mystery told lyrically by Bryers, a careful stylist who selects even the simplest words with the discriminating eye of a shore walker gathering small, smooth stones washed up from the sea. --New York Times Bryers brings a civil and historical tone to his New England tale of terror; think Stephen King without the hobgoblins or Masterpiece Theatre with claws . . . a complex, compelling mystery. --USA Today A lovely literary thriller with a real edge to it that manages to combine American history and contemporary themes with elegance and immediacy. --Helen Heller, The Toronto Star Bryers peers into the places of the soul where fear resides. . . . The Prayer of the Bone has the pacing and cinematic flair of Stephen King and even King's native Maine as its psycho-setting. --Philadelphia Inquirer Praise for Bryer's In A Pig's Ear Bubbling with rare charms and full of spell-binding irony, In A Pig's Ear foams away like a magic potion--potent, effervescent, intoxicating. Its heady cocktail of legends past and modern grotesques forms a rapturous tale, rich in symbolism, disturbing in humour with its essential joke lurking in the title--if nothing else, Paul Bryers proves that a silk purse can indeed be made from a sow's ear. --Times Literary Supplement Bryers liberally garnishes this full plate with fairy tales, Jungian imagery, Nazi history and film lore, creating a provocative phantasmagoria held together by the darkly funny voice of the worldly-wise Merlin. --Publishers Weekly Bryers takes as his model the story of Camelot, transposes it to contemporary Europe and creates a fiction as magical and absorbing as the original, told by the wizard Merlin . . . we are only lucky there is such an author to channel his voice. --Entertainment Bryers brings both past and present to life with equal intelligence and skill . . . intelligent history mixed into a high complexity of entertainment and made riveting by a master hand. --Kirkus Reviews Both thought-provoking and gripping, Bryers has written a well-paced work that asks questions about self, society and the force of history with all the flair of an intellectual thriller. --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

As a storyteller Bryers is superb. --Time Out Praise for Bryers's The Prayer of the Bone An elegant and unearthly literary mystery told lyrically by Bryers, a careful stylist who selects even the simplest words with the discriminating eye of a shore walker gathering small, smooth stones washed up from the sea. --New York Times Bryers brings a civil and historical tone to his New England tale of terror; think Stephen King without the hobgoblins or Masterpiece Theatre with claws . . . a complex, compelling mystery. --USA Today A lovely literary thriller with a real edge to it that manages to combine American history and contemporary themes with elegance and immediacy. --Helen Heller, The Toronto Star Bryers peers into the places of the soul where fear resides. . . . The Prayer of the Bone has the pacing and cinematic flair of Stephen King and even King's native Maine as its psycho-setting. --Philadelphia Inquirer Praise for Bryer's In A Pig's Ear Bubbling with rare charms and full of spell-binding irony, In A Pig's Ear foams away like a magic potion--potent, effervescent, intoxicating. Its heady cocktail of legends past and modern grotesques forms a rapturous tale, rich in symbolism, disturbing in humour with its essential joke lurking in the title--if nothing else, Paul Bryers proves that a silk purse can indeed be made from a sow's ear. --Times Literary Supplement Bryers liberally garnishes this full plate with fairy tales, Jungian imagery, Nazi history and film lore, creating a provocative phantasmagoria held together by the darkly funny voice of the worldly-wise Merlin. --Publishers Weekly Bryers takes as his model the story of Camelot, transposes it to contemporary Europe and creates a fiction as magical and absorbing as the original, told by the wizard Merlin . . . we are only lucky there is such an author to channel his voice. --Entertainment Bryers brings both past and present to life with equal intelligence and skill . . . intelligent history mixed into a high complexity of entertainment and made riveting by a master hand. --Kirkus Reviews Both thought-provoking and gripping, Bryers has written a well-paced work that asks questions about self, society and the force of history with all the flair of an intellectual thriller. --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

As a storyteller, Bryers is superb. --Time Out Praise for Bryers's The Prayer of the Bone An elegant and unearthly literary mystery told lyrically by Bryers, a careful stylist who selects even the simplest words with the discriminating eye of a shore walker gathering small, smooth stones washed up from the sea. --New York Times Bryers brings a civil and historical tone to his New England tale of terror; think Stephen King without the hobgoblins or Masterpiece Theatre with claws . . . a complex, compelling mystery. --USA Today A lovely literary thriller with a real edge to it that manages to combine American history and contemporary themes with elegance and immediacy. --Helen Heller, The Toronto Star Bryers peers into the places of the soul where fear resides. . . . The Prayer of the Bone has the pacing and cinematic flair of Stephen King and even King's native Maine as its psycho-setting. --Philadelphia Inquirer Praise for Bryer's In A Pig's Ear Bubbling with rare charms and full of spell-binding irony, In A Pig's Ear foams away like a magic potion--potent, effervescent, intoxicating. Its heady cocktail of legends past and modern grotesques forms a rapturous tale, rich in symbolism, disturbing in humour with its essential joke lurking in the title--if nothing else, Paul Bryers proves that a silk purse can indeed be made from a sow's ear. --Times Literary Supplement Bryers liberally garnishes this full plate with fairy tales, Jungian imagery, Nazi history and film lore, creating a provocative phantasmagoria held together by the darkly funny voice of the worldly-wise Merlin. --Publishers Weekly Bryers takes as his model the story of Camelot, transposes it to contemporary Europe and creates a fiction as magical and absorbing as the original, told by the wizard Merlin . . . we are only lucky there is such an author to channel his voice. --Entertainment Bryers brings both past and present to life with equal intelligence and skill . . . intelligent history mixed into a high complexity of entertainment and made riveting by a master hand. --Kirkus Reviews Both thought-provoking and gripping, Bryers has written a well-paced work that asks questions about self, society and the force of history with all the flair of an intellectual thriller. --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Thrillingly plotted, rigorously researched, and told with sizzling energy and style.--TP Fielden, author of the Miss Dimont and Guy Harford Mysteries Bryers muscles up his renowned storytelling skills to deliver a smoothly written page-turner that smashingly delivers on the literary, historical, and emotional fronts. Together, Aiden Blake and researcher Hannah Harper follow a trail that leads them from secret Nazi bunkers to the mountains of Italy, racing against time to solve the mystery and prevent a deadly conspiracy from coming to fruition. What a ride!--James R. Benn, author of Proud Sorrows and other Billy Boyle WWII mysteries

As a storyteller, Bryers is superb. --Time Out Praise for Bryers's The Prayer of the Bone An elegant and unearthly literary mystery told lyrically by Bryers, a careful stylist who selects even the simplest words with the discriminating eye of a shore walker gathering small, smooth stones washed up from the sea. --New York Times Bryers brings a civil and historical tone to his New England tale of terror; think Stephen King without the hobgoblins or Masterpiece Theatre with claws . . . a complex, compelling mystery. --USA Today A lovely literary thriller with a real edge to it that manages to combine American history and contemporary themes with elegance and immediacy. --Helen Heller, The Toronto Star Bryers peers into the places of the soul where fear resides. . . . The Prayer of the Bone has the pacing and cinematic flair of Stephen King and even King's native Maine as its psycho-setting. --Philadelphia Inquirer Praise for Bryer's In A Pig's Ear Bubbling with rare charms and full of spell-binding irony, In A Pig's Ear foams away like a magic potion--potent, effervescent, intoxicating. Its heady cocktail of legends past and modern grotesques forms a rapturous tale, rich in symbolism, disturbing in humour with its essential joke lurking in the title--if nothing else, Paul Bryers proves that a silk purse can indeed be made from a sow's ear. --Times Literary Supplement Bryers liberally garnishes this full plate with fairy tales, Jungian imagery, Nazi history and film lore, creating a provocative phantasmagoria held together by the darkly funny voice of the worldly-wise Merlin. --Publishers Weekly Bryers takes as his model the story of Camelot, transposes it to contemporary Europe and creates a fiction as magical and absorbing as the original, told by the wizard Merlin . . . we are only lucky there is such an author to channel his voice. --Entertainment Bryers brings both past and present to life with equal intelligence and skill . . . intelligent history mixed into a high complexity of entertainment and made riveting by a master hand. --Kirkus Reviews Both thought-provoking and gripping, Bryers has written a well-paced work that asks questions about self, society and the force of history with all the flair of an intellectual thriller. --Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal Thrillingly plotted, rigorously researched, and told with sizzling energy and style.--TP Fielden, author of the Miss Dimont and Guy Harford Mysteries

Author Information

London-based Paul Bryers is also the author, under the pseudonym Seth Hunter, of the highly acclaimed Nathan Peake Novels: a series of naval adventures set against the canvas of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. One of Bryers' children’s stories, In a Pig's Ear, was named as one of the Guardian's six best novels of the year. He has written and directed many historical dramas for British television, radio, and the theatre.

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