Conspiracy

Starred review from September 28, 2020
In Parris’s brilliant fifth Giordano Bruno thriller (after Treachery), Bruno, an Italian expatriate and free thinker who has served as an operative for Elizabeth I’s legendary spymaster, Francis Walsingham, travels in 1585 to Paris to ask a friend of his, Fr. Paul Lefèvre, to intercede with the pope to reverse his excommunication for reading forbidden books. Lefèvre agrees to consider Bruno’s request, but within a week the priest is found floating in the Seine barely alive with his skull smashed; shortly before, he delivered a fire-and-brimstone sermon meant to “shake Paris to its foundations.” At his friend’s request, Bruno is brought to Lefèvre, who utters the word Circe before dying. Bruno’s curiosity about the murder and the cryptic last message gets official sanction when the French king summons Bruno and asks him to investigate. Parris is, as always, adept at maintaining a fraught atmosphere, and effortlessly integrates the whodunit plot with the power politics of the time. This superior blend of religious schisms and murder should win Parris new fans. Agent: Deborah Schneider, ICM Partners.