Dark Matter [Hardcover]

Holmes and Watson provide the template for this very satisfying historical thriller from Kerr (The Grid, etc.), with Sir Isaac Newton acting as great detective and one Christopher Ellis serving as narrator. It's 1696, and a series of murders are plaguing the Tower of London, where the middle-aged Newton has recently assumed (as in real life) the position of warden of the royal mint, with the younger Ellis (again as in real life) serving as his assistant. Like Holmes, the cold and cerebral Newton relies on rationalism the scientific method to solve the crimes, while Ellis, quick with sword, pistol and temper, brings the emotional counterweight provided by Conan Doyle's Watson. The murders are accompanied by esoteric clues, most notably encrypted messages and alchemical references, that spur Newton to their resolution as forcefully as does his intense sense of duty, for the killings seem to involve not only a plot to disrupt a recoinage necessary to continue England's war with France, but also a conspiracy to commit religious genocide against a backdrop of incessant tensions between Catholics and Protestants. The mystery elements of the novel provide a sturdy spine for the book's main flesh: its robust recreation of life at the end of the 17th century. Ellis's fluid narration sets the tone, illuminating a London beset by pestilence, poverty, whores and ruffians, noblemen grave or foppish, opium dens, brothels and grisly executions, and a bright array of historical figures including, in the role of blackguard, Daniel Defoe. There's an erotic/romantic subplot involving Ellis and Newton's niece, but the main focus is on the two leads. Both are well drawn, though Newton, ostensibly the novel's center, is less compelling than Ellis's full-blooded youth. That disparity, and an overly complex plot, are the drawbacks of what is, withal, a most gripping and well-appointed entertainment.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

There have been many mysteries featuring famous historical figures as protagonists, among them Elliot Roosevelt's crime-solving First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Stephanie Barron's investigative Jane Austen, and Karen Harper's sleuthing Queen Elizabeth I. Now comes Sir Isaac Newton and his assistant, Christopher Ellis (also an actual person). It is 1696 in London, and Ellis has been hired to help Newton in his job as Warden of the Royal Mint. Ordered by the king to find and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten the war-shaken British economy, the two men get more than they bargained for when they uncover a much more dangerous conspiracy. Plot devices such as secret coded documents, the pseudoscience of alchemy, and a string of strange murders make for an exciting read. Using as backdrop the Tower of London, the Royal Mint, Bedlam madhouse, and Newgate Prison, the ever-versatile Kerr, author of sophisticated science-based thrillers like The Second Angel and Esau, weaves a rich tapestry of interesting characters and period details. Highly recommended. Fred Gervat, Concordia Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

*Starred Review* It's tempting to dismiss Kerr's latest historical mystery as nothing more than a Sherlock Holmes adventure in Newtonian drag. One of the seventeenth century's greatest minds, Isaac Newton, is appointed warden of the Royal Mint during England's Great Recoinage. Aided by educated yet slow-witted sidekick and narrator Christopher Ellis, Newton employs the scientific method and logical deduction to thwart a high-reaching conspiracy to murder thousands of Catholics, pass counterfeit guineas, and reignite the war with France. "You seem to know everything without the need to be told of it first," failed lawyer Ellis exclaims midway through the tale. Replies Newton, "It's no trick. Merely observation. . . . That is enough." Holmesian similarities aside, Dark Matter turns out to be an illuminating, often crackling exploration into the mysteries of science, mathematics, religion, and human nature-- played out in the dark shadows of the Tower of London and on the city's even meaner streets. Kerr's mastery of period detail makes the story all the more delicious, as does the fact that Newton really did hold a post at the Royal Mint, where, with the help of a clerk named Christopher Ellis, the author of Optics and Principia Mathematica tracked down counterfeiters with the ruthless dedication of Eliot Ness. This isn't as multilayered as Iain Pears' Instance of the Fingerpost (1998), but it is considerably more accessible and covers much of the same thematic ground. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

"A smashing mystery."

"Anyone who enjoyed the Name of the Rose will find Dark Matter a fine read."

Dark Matter is historical mystery at its finest, an extraordinary, suspense-filled journey through the shadowy streets and back alleys of London with the gifted Sir Isaac Newton and his faithful protégé, Christopher Ellis. The haunted Tower with its bloody history is the perfect backdrop for this richly satisfying tale of life in seventeenth-century London.

Praise for Philip Kerr
“[A] sly and serious writer.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Kerr has the talent to convey the big idea and to take you
places you have never been.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“A brilliantly innovative thriller writer.”
—Salman Rushdie

“[Kerr] makes the brain cells as well as the hairs on
the back of the neck tingle.”
—GQ magazine

“One of the best crime novelists in the world.”
—The Globe and Mail (London)


From the Hardcover edition. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

PHILIP KERR was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and lives in London with his wife and three children. Dark Matter is his eleventh novel.

The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.

(Isaiah 60:19)

On Thursday, November the fifth, 1696, most people went to church. But I went to fight a duel.

Gunpowder Day was then a cause for Protestant celebration twice over: this had been the day, in 1605, when King James I had been delivered from a Roman Catholic plot to blow up the Parliament; and, in 1688, it had also been the day when the Prince of Orange had landed at Torbay to deliver the Church of England from the oppressive hand of another Stuart, the Catholic King James II. Many Gunpowder Day sermons were preached throughout the City, and I would have done well to have listened to one of them, for a little consideration of heavenly deliverance might have helped me to channel my anger against Papist tyranny instead of the man who had impugned my honour. But my blood was up and, my head being full of fighting, I and my second walked to the World's End Tavern in Knightsbridge where we had a slice of beef and a glass of Rhenish for breakfast, and thence to Hyde Park, to meet my opponent, Mister Shayer, who was already waiting with his own second.

Shayer was an ugly-looking fellow, whose tongue was too big for his mouth so that he lisped like a little child when he spoke, and I regarded him as I would have regarded a mad dog. I no longer remember what our dispute was about, except to say that I was a quarrelsome sort of young man and very likely there was fault on both sides.

No apologies were solicited and none proffered and straightaway all four of us threw off our coats and fell to with swords. I had some skill with the weapon, having been trained by Mister Figg in the Oxford Road, but there was little or no finesse in this fight and, in truth, I made short work of the matter, wounding Shayer in the left pap which, being close to his heart, placed the poor fellow in mortal fear of his life, and me in fear of prosecution, for duelling was against the law since 1666. Most gentlemen fighting paid but little heed to the legal consequences of their actions; however, Mister Shayer and myself were both at Gray's Inn, acquainting ourselves with a tincture of English law, and our quarrel was quickly the cause of a scandal that obliged my leaving off a career at the Bar, permanently.

It was perhaps no great loss to the legal profession, for I had little interest in the Law; and even less aptitude, for I had only gone to the Bar to please my late father who always had a great respect for that profession. And yet what else could I have done? We were not a rich family, but not without some connections, either. My elder brother, Charles Ellis, who later became an MP, was then the under-secretary to William Lowndes, who was himself the Permanent Secretary to the First Lord of the Treasury. The Treasurer, until his recent resignation, had been Lord Godolphin. Several months later the King named as Godolphin's replacement the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Montagu, to whom Isaac Newton owed his appointment as Warden of the Royal Mint in May 1696.

My brother told me that until Newton's arrival in the position, there had been few if any duties that were attached to the Wardenship; and Newton had taken the position in expectation of receiving the emolument for not much work; but that the Great Recoinage had given the office a greater importance than hitherto it had enjoyed; and that Newton was obliged to be the principal agent of the coin's protection.

In truth it was sore in need of protecting for it had become much debased of late. The only true money of the realm was the silver coin-for there was little if ever much gold about-which constituted sixpences, shillings, half-crowns and crowns; but until the great and mechanised recoinage, mostly this was hand-struck with an ill-defined rim that lent itself to clipping or filing. Except for a parcel of coin struck after the Restoration, none of the coin in circulation was more recent than the Civil War, while a great quantity had been issued by Queen Elizabeth.

Fate took a hand to drive the coinage further out of order when, after William and Mary came to the throne, the price of gold and silver became greatly increased, so that there was much more than a shilling's worth of silver in a shilling. Or at least there ought to have been. A new-struck shilling weighed ninety-three grains, although with the price of silver increasing all the time it need only have weighed seventy-seven grains; and even more vexing was that with the coin so worn and thin, and rubbed with age, and clipped and filed, a shilling often weighed as little fifty grains. Because of this, people were inclined to hoard the new coin and refuse the old.

The Recoinage Act had passed through the Parliament in January 1696, although this only chafed the sore, the Parliament having been imprudent enough to damn the old money before ensuring that there existed sufficient supplies of the new. And throughout the summer-if that was what it was, the weather being so bad-money had remained in such short supply that tumults every day were feared. For without good money how were men to be paid, and how was bread to be bought? If all that was not subversion enough, to this sum of calamity was added the fraud of the bankers and the goldsmiths who, having got immense treasures by extortion, hoarded their bullion in expectation of its advancing in value. To say nothing of the banks that every day were set up, or failed, besides an intolerable amount of taxation on everything save female bodies and an honest, smiling countenance, of which there were few if any to be seen. Indeed there was such a want of public spirit anywhere that the Nation seemed to sink under so many calamities.

Much aware of my sudden need for a position and Doctor Newton's equally sudden need for a clerk, Charles prevailed upon Lord Montagu to consider advancing me in Newton's favour for employment, and this despite our not having the fondness which we used and ought to have as brothers. And by and by, it was arranged that I should go to Doctor Newton's house in Jermyn Street to recommend myself to him.

I remember the day well, for there was a hard frost and a report of more Catholic plots against the King, and a great search for Jacobites was already under way. But I do not remember that Newton's reputation had made much of an impression upon my young mind; for, unlike Newton, who was a Cambridge Professor, I was an Oxford man and, although I knew the classics, I could no more have disputed any general mathematical system, let alone one affecting the universe, than I could have discoursed upon the nature of a spectrum. I was aware only that Newton was, like Mister Locke and Sir Christopher Wren, one of the most learned men in England, although I could not have said why: cards were my reading then and pretty girls my scholarly pursuit-for I had studied women closely; and I was as skilled in the use of sword and pistol as some are with a sextant and a pair of dividers. In short, I was as ignorant as a jury unable to find a verdict. And yet, of late-especially since leaving my inn of court-my ignorance had begun to weigh upon me.

Jermyn Street was a recently completed and quite fashionable suburb of Westminster, with Newton's house toward the western and better end, close by St. James's Church. At eleven o'clock I presented myself at Doctor Newton's door, was admitted by a servant and ushered into a room with a good fire in it, where Newton sat awaiting my arrival upon a red chair with a red cushion and a red morocco-bound book. Newton did not wear a wig and I saw that his hair was grey but that his teeth were all his own and good for a man of his age. He wore a crimson shag gown trimmed with gold buttons and I also remember that he had a blister or issue upon his neck that troubled him a little. The room was all red, as if a smallpox victim did sometimes lie in it, for it is said that this colour draws out the infection. It was well furnished with several landscapes upon the red walls and a fine globe that occupied a whole corner by the window, as if this room was all the universe there was and he the god in it, for he struck me as a most wise-looking man. His nose was all bridge, as across the Tiber, and his eyes which were quiet in repose became as sharp as bodkins the minute his brow furrowed under the concentration of a thought or a question. His mouth looked fastidious, as if he lacked appetite and humour, and his dimpled chin was on the edge of finding itself joined by a twin. And when he spoke, he spoke with an accent I should incorrectly have supposed to be Norfolk but now know to have been Lincolnshire, for he was born near Grantham. That day I met him first he was just a month or so short of his fifty-fourth birthday.

"It is not my manner," he said, "to speak anything that is extraneous to my business. So let me come straight to the point, Mister Ellis. When I became Warden of His Majesty's Mint I little thought that my life should become taken up with the detection, pursuit and punishment of coiners, clippers and coun-

terfeiters. But that being my discovery, I wrote to the Treasury Committee to the effect that such matters were the proper province of the Solicitor General and that if it were possible, to let this cup pass from me. Their Lordships willed it otherwise, however, and therefore I must stand the course. Indeed, I have made this matter my own personal crusade, for if the Great Recoinage does not succeed, I fear that we shall lose this war with the French and the whole kingdom shall be undone. God knows I have, these past six months, in my own person done my full duty, I am sure. But the business of my taking these rascals is so great, there being so many of them, I find I have sore need of a clerk to assist me in my duties.

"But I want no truckle-head milksop in my service. God knows what disorders we may fall into and whether any violence ma... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Isaac Newton is responsible for the purity of the coin of Britain, made in the Tower of London. When he uncovers a plot to debase the coin, he follows the intricate clues to a surprising conclusion. Kerr writes in an old-fashioned style, using formal language. Unfortunately Byron Jennings's narration bleeds into the dialogue, and his characterizations are not consistent. The volume changes between characters and narrative, and there is no break to indicate the end of each CD. Despite the flaws in narration, the mystery itself is captivating. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.