Thursday, January 31, 2008

The Gilded Seal by James Twining

Find this book at your library

Genre - Thriller

"It started with a whisper; a barely voiced tremor of suppressed anticipation that rippled gently through the expectant crowd.

‘Pronto. Pronto estara aqui.’ Soon. She’ll be here soon.

But the whisper evaporated almost as quickly as it had appeared. Snatched from their lips by a capricious wind, it was carried far above their heads into the warm night."

James Twining’s The Gilded Seal is a maze of twists and turns screaming from Europe to the Americas to Japan to New York and to the catacombs under Paris at breakneck speed. In this latest episode in the complex life of reformed art thief, Tom Kirk, we see him clashing wits against his arch-enemy, Milo. Called in to investigate the theft of Da Vinci’s 'Madonna of the Yarnwinder', Tom is chilled by the macabre sign nailed to the wall; a message just for him, Felix, announcing Milo is back.

Meanwhile, his old lover, Jennifer Browne, FBI agent, travels to Paris to investigate an art fraud. Their paths cross early, adding another layer of complexity to both their lives. Soon, they are drawn into a labyrinth of thieves and kidnappers, and a host of cruel murders. Someone is torturing and killing Tom’s friends. He must race against time to save the life of the kidnapped daughter of one of them.

Then, Jennifer discovers Tom is plotting to steal the 'Mona Lisa’ from the Louvre. And who is the Japanese man?

Once again, James Twining leads his readers on a heart-stopping, page turning, eye-popping adventure. Twining is one of those writers who never lets the writing get in the way of the characters and their stories. His ability has the reader feeling like a consummate voyeur.

---- Reviewed by Hannah

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