Spanning seventy years from wartime to present day France, May’s audacious new Enzo Macleod thriller finds the detective embroiled in two separate, yet equally baffling, crimes linked by the Mona Lisa.
In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house. The deaths occurred more than seventy years apart.
Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo Macleod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter. Two extraordinary narratives are set in train - one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of Occupied France; the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown.
And Enzo's investigations reveal an unexpected link between the murders - the Mona Lisa.
Tasked by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle to keep the world's most famous painting out of Nazi hands after the fall of France in 1940, 28-year-old Georgette Pignal finds herself swept along by the tide of history. Following in the wake of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa as it is moved from chateau to chateau by the Louvre, she finds herself just one step ahead of two German art experts sent to steal it for rival patrons - Hitler and Goering.
What none of them know is that the Louvre itself has taken exceptional measures to keep the painting safe, unwittingly setting in train a fatal sequence of events extending over seven decades.
Events that have led to both killings.
The Night Gate spans three generations, taking us from war-torn London, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Berlin and Vichy France, to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020. In his latest novel, Peter May shows why he is one of the great contemporary writers of crime fiction.
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
ISBN: 9781784295080
Number of pages: 496
Weight: 340 g
Dimensions: 196 x 128 x 36 mm
One of the glories of the modern crime novel - Independent
The Night Gate transports the reader back and forth in time and across Europe . . . May uses his intimate knowledge of Scotland and rural France to his advantage, and his expert scene-setting really brings these locations to life. [A] very enjoyable read . . . fascinating historical insights - The Scotsman
The Night Gate is a sweeping historical novel with a dual timeline, France in the present day (2020) and Scotland, Berlin and France in the early 1940’s.
This is the 7th and, we are told, final book in the Enzo...
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Enzo Macleod gets a call from a colleague asking for help. A disinterred body has been discovered in the roots of a fallen tree. Seven days later a famous art critic is brutally murdered in the same village. Before he... More
I absolutely loved this book, brilliant story, excellent character development and one of my all time favourite main characters Enzo returns with a complete update to his life story. This book was a complex... More
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