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Voltaire’s Calligrapher by Pablo De Santis

Dalessius takes a job as the philosopher Voltaire’s messenger and spy. Soon he is entangled in a web of secrets and intrigue. The story leads Dalessius and readers from the courts and scaffolds of Toulouse to Paris and a mysterious fortified monastery where Abbot Mazy guards a horrific secret.

Aided by an executioner and the beautiful daughter of an automation maker, Dalessuis faces sinister clergymen, inventive henchmen and poisonous fish as he looks to uncover the Abbot’s secret. It will take all of Dalessius’s courage as well as Voltaire’s cunning and wit if he is to succeed.

Pablo De Santis worked as a journalist and comic strip creator before becoming Editor in Chief of one of Argentina’s leading comics’ magazines. It therefore might not be surprising that this novel is filled with colourful characters. Voltaire’s Calligrapher is a captivating historical mystery set in a time where mechanisms are ingenious but outlawed, where rumours abound and where secret messages are written on the bodies of women. Dalessuis encounters strange events and things that are not always as they seem as on Voltaire’s orders he moves from one placement to another. This novel shows that in France, the eighteenth century enlightenment was as much about hiding secrets as it was about finding truths.

De Santis tells the story in an interesting and novel way, as while there are murders and there is an investigation, it is not told from a protagonist of the investigation, but from the point of view of a mere pawn in someone else’s investigation. Dalessuis for the most part doesn’t know what exactly his employer is looking for, let alone what he plans to do with the information once it is received. His life though is often in real danger.

RRP $26.99
Published and distributed by HarperCollins Publishers
 

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