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Ex Libris
Ex Libris
Nov 13, 2024 2:09 AM

Author:Ross King

Ex Libris

Responding to a cryptic summons to a remote country house, London bookseller Isaac Inchbold finds himself responsible for restoring a magnificent library pillaged during the English Civil War, and in the process slipping from the surface of 1660s London into an underworld of spies and smugglers, ciphers and forgeries. As he assembles the fragments of a complex historical mystery, Inchbold learns how Sir Ambrose Plessington, founder of the library, escaped from Bohemia on the eve of the Thirty Years War with plunder from the Imperial Library. Inchbold's hunt for one of these stolen volumes - a lost Hermetic text - soon casts him into an elaborate intrigue; his fortunes hang on the discovery of the missing manuscript but his search reveals that the elusive volume is not what it seems and that he has been made an unwitting player in a treacherous game.

Reviews

This brilliant story of loyalty, betrayal and excess is utterly thrilling – a sun-lounger must!

—— Closer

Must read

—— Daily Express Saturday Magazine

Seamanship, storms, tension galore, money talk and a decent minimum of love - what more could one ask?

—— The Bookman magazine

Yes! A rip-roarer...those action sequences at which he is so brilliant, the equatorial heat, the bubbling sea-bed, an outworn ship and a drunken skipper - splendid!

—— Evening Standard

A fascinating, swaggeringly confident performance

—— Sunday Times

A page-turning caper filled with well-timed surprises...there is also the saving grace of Reacher's deadpan humor -as when he is sawing with a motel key at a captive's rope bindings. "Don't you have a knife?" the man asks. "I have a toothbrush,! Reacher responds. "That won't help," the captive says, to which Reacher retorts: "It's good against plaque."

—— Wall Street Journal

With Child, you can always count on furious action - and a damned good time.

—— Miami Herald

Masterful writing and storytelling...Child makes it look effortless...If there were such a thing as a writer-magician, Lee Child woud be the face above the cloak.

—— Washington Post

Child always puts his heart into the elaborate quasi-military operations he cooks up for Reacher...But there's something even more chilling about those lonesome hours spent riding the Interstate, watching the rundown family farms and commercial strip malls and topless bars go by.

—— International Herald Tribune

Will leave the legion of Reacher addicts satisfied but craving for their next fix.

—— Irish Independent

The most satisfying of all 17 thrillers in the series. The unfolding of events nudges along at just the right rate... toward an authentically gripping climax.

—— Toronto Star

Settings don’t come much more Gothic than Wreaking, the derelict, decaying...psychiatric hospital of James Scudamore’s striking third novel

—— Daily Mail

This is the work of a writer totally at ease with, and confident in, his powers. A wonderfully assured novel with scope and ambition and with enough of a mystery at its heart to keep the reader hooked till the end

—— We Love This Book

We are left with the characters in our heads for days, and the sense of unease that Scudamore cleverly conjures up

—— Press Association Syndication

A twisted, unsettling tale of family lies and lonely souls

—— Shortlist

An immersion in the physical and psychic ruins of a contemporary Britain which enchants and disturbs, lures and repels. The inner poetry and descriptive mastery of James Scudamore's Wreaking are riches which cannot be forgotten. If you only read one novel in coming times, make it this astonishing and deeply moving chronicle

—— Alan Warner

This is an impressive work from the critically acclaimed author of Heliopolis

—— Good Book Guide
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