The Last Bookaneer

Description

Mystery, celebrity, theft - and a thrilling adventure set at the ends of the earth... 'An ingenious thriller' (Sunday Times) from the author of The Dante Club A reclusive writer...A stolen manuscript...An adventure at the ends of the earth On the island of Samoa, a dying Robert Louis Stevenson labours over a new novel. It is rumoured that this may be the author of Treasure Island's greatest masterpiece. On the other side of the world this news fires the imaginations of the bookaneers, literary pirates who steal the latest manuscripts by famous writers. Two adversaries set out for the South Pacific- Pen Davenport, a tortured criminal genius haunted by his past and Belial, his nemesis. Both dream of fortune and immortality with what may be their last and most incredible heist. The Last Bookaneer thrillingly depicts the lost world of these doomed outlaws, a tropical island with a violent destiny, a brewing colonial war and a reclusive genius directing events from high in his mountain compound.

Matthew Pearl is the internationally bestselling author of The Dante Club, published in more than thirty languages and forty countries. His other books include The Poe Shadow and The Last Dickens. Pearl is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School and has taught literature at Harvard and at Emerson College. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

An ingenious thriller * Sunday Times * Masterly story-telling * Daily Mail * A mixture of a classic heist and literary history lesson; the whole Victorian world of letters is cleverly and wittily reimagined -- Kate Saunders * The Times * A historical jigsaw puzzle of literary larceny, deception, and derring-do...richly imagined * Boston Globe * [Pearl's] clever final twist will surprise the general reader, and please Stevenson scholars -- Janette Currie * Independent on Sunday *