Summary
It's Christmas Eve, 1800, and the world wants Napoleon Bonaparte dead. Part high-octane suspense, part dire warning, The Eagle and the Viper from multiple-winning novelist Loren D. Estleman reveals how close our world came--at the dawn of a promising new century--to total war.
It's a time of improvised explosive devices, terrorist training camps, international assassins, and war on civilians. It's Christmas Eve, 1800.
This much is history: On December 24th, 1800, an "infernal machine" exploded in one of the busiest streets in Paris, France, destroying buildings and killing innocent civilians. It wasn't the first attempt on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the newly minted Republic of France.
This much is exclusive to our story: Upon the failure of the Christmas Eve plot, the conspiracy takes a new and more diabolical turn.
Posterity knows what became of Napoleon: He led France into a series of military adventures that ended in his defeat, followed by decades of peace. But this future hung on a precarious thread. One man can make history; another can change it.
Loren D. Estleman was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on September 15, 1952. He received a B.A. in English literature and journalism from Eastern Michigan University in 1974. He spent several years as a reporter on the police beat before leaving to write full time in 1980. He wrote book reviews for such newspapers as The New York Times and The Washington Post and contributed articles to such periodicals as TV Guide.
He is a writer of mysteries and westerns. His first novel was published in 1976 and since then he has published more than 70 books including the Amos Walker series, Writing the Popular Novel, Roy and Lillie: A Love Story, The Confessions of Al Capone, and a The Branch and the Scaffold. He received four Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Golden Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement from Western Writers of America, and the Michigan Author's Award in 1997.
(Bowker Author Biography)
