Product Description

A distinguished Shakespearean scholar found tortured to death . . .

A lost manuscript and its secrets buried for centuries . . .

An encrypted map that leads to incalculable wealth . . .

The Washington Post called Michael Gruber's previous work "a miracle of intelligent fiction and among the essential novels of recent years." Now comes his most intellectually provocative and compulsively readable novel yet.

Tap-tapping the keys and out come the words on this little screen, and who will read them I hardly know. I could be dead by the time anyone actually gets to read them, as dead as, say, Tolstoy. Or Shakespeare. Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?

These are the words of Jake Mishkin, whose seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits a killer—or killers—unknown, Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. In a frantic race from New York to England and Switzerland, Jake finds himself matching wits with a shadowy figure who seems to anticipate his every move. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one—not family, not friends, not lovers—is to be trusted.

Moving between twenty-first-century America and seventeenth-century England, The Book of Air and Shadows is a modern thriller that brilliantly re-creates William Shakespeare's life at the turn of the seventeenth century and combines an ingenious and intricately layered plot with a devastating portrait of a contemporary man on the brink of self-discovery . . . or self-destruction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127168 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 480 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this ingenious literary thriller from Gruber (The Witch's Boy), the lives of two men are changed forever by William Shakespeare and the letters of Richard Bracegirdle, a 16th-century English spy and soldier. Jake Mishkin, a Manhattan intellectual property attorney and a bit of a rake, goes on the run from Russian gangsters. Albert Crosetti, an aspiring filmmaker working for an antiquarian bookstore, finds that life is more exciting than movies—perhaps too exciting. Together, Mishkin and Crosetti travel to England in search of a previously unknown Shakespeare manuscript mentioned by Bracegirdle. Though the pace sometimes slows to allow Mishkin, Crosetti and Bracegirdle to divulge interesting aspects of their personal lives, these digressions only make the story more engaging. The suspense created around the double-crosses and triple-crosses works because of the close connection readers forge with Crosetti in particular. The mysterious murder of a Shakespearean scholar, shootouts in the streets of Queens and an unlikely romance all combine to make for a gripping, satisfying read. (Apr.)
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From AudioFile
Stephen Hoye takes a calculated, possibly fatal, risk in his approach to narrating this thriller about a lost Shakespeare manuscript. His portrayal of the protagonist, Jake Mishkin, a self-loathing intellectual property lawyer, is arid to the point putting off the listener. Its a reasonable choice for a character we are not meant to like but does not create a person one looks forward to spending hour after hour with. It doesnt help that Hoye affects an annoying, sometimes disappearing, Queens accent for the other major character, a young would-be screenwriter who is drawn into the dangerous search for the missing manuscript. Happily, Gruber himself comes to the rescue, with colorful characters and clever, intricate plotting. M.O. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Codes 'n' classics have shown some staying power despite even the so-so prose of both the book that started the avalanche, The Da Vinci Code, and its imitators. The plot summary of The Book of Air and Shadows--ciphered seventeenth-century letters found in a rare book trigger a race to find an undiscovered Shakespeare play--might seem like yet another rubbing of the grail were it not for Gruber's intelligence and engaging style. This big bibliothriller stars a self-loathing, weightlifting intellectual-property lawyer; a timid wannabe film student; and a prickly bookbinder with a mysterious past, all marginally allied against untrustworthy scholars, Russian mobsters, and a mystery man. Though he ambitiously uses three different time lines and three points of view, Gruber deftly raises the thriller stakes and accelerates the plot while still creating convincing personal journeys for his characters. Even better, he finds time to thoughtfully explore related concepts, such as the ways movies inform our behavior and the nature of industries built to profit on creativity. All that and a tantalizing imagining of Shakespeare's personality, too. Try Ross King's Ex-Libris (2001) and Jim Nisbet's Syracuse Codex (2005) for two wildly different but related takes. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Great Modern Literature
The Book of Air and Shadows was absolutely thrilling to read! Gruber takes you captive on the very first page providing you with a hint of the end of the book. Some 400 pages later, I found myself still eagerly turning the pages to reveal the end of the story! The balance between the story of Mishkin and Crosetti is masterful - it makes it very hard to find a spot to stop reading! The thread of the encrypted Bracegirdle letters runs a parallel story throughout the novel. While not difficult to read, it is substantive in language and rich in detail. I enjoyed the detail in this book and I wanted to savor each page and each twist and turn. The characters are complete and complex - even peripheral characters have enough detail that they are all real to the reader. I will be searching out every book by this author. Toss away the light, unmemorable novel and grab this worthy piece of modern literature!

An intelligent read
Like Gruber's earlier works, this is an intelligent mystery, filled with anthropological, historical and literary insights alongside the danger and darkness.

A great storyteller, Gruber moves us across time and place skillfully, but brings us home with lots of mother - son dynamics (in all his books!), capturing the familiar (and frustrating) engagements that often occur between strong intelligent moms, and capable loving (yet unsure!) sons. Gruber draws us into the lives of his characters and their family relations (good, bad, weird, loving, strained or threatened) with angst, humour and fast talk.

Enjoy.

First rate historial fiction...or is it?
I finally finished The Book of Air and Shadows. It took me way longer than it should have, but the book is finished. And despite the length of time that it took me to finish the novel, I give it the Dave two thumbs up!

So what's the book about? In short, it's a Da Vinci Code type of novel where the grand prize is an unknown Shakespearean manuscript. The novel is written from three different perspectives, each of which provides a unique viewpoint on the story. And better still, the perspective is written in a different style. This feature of the novel I really liked.

The only thing that I didn't like was the writing style for the protagonist from Shakespearean times. The spelling is old English and when words like 'only' are written like 'onlie' it takes double long to read. But having said that, it does give a very unique style to the book.

My recommendation? Go out and pick up the novel. You won't regret it.