Deus - Hardcover

Boast, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747217254 ISBN 13: 9780747217251

Publisher: Headline, 1997

Synopsis

In the thirteenth century a hideous murder was committed on London Bridge and the guilty were protected by the influence of the Knights Templar. But the crime haunts the murderers and the families of the innocent victims for generations. Buried on London Bridge is the key to the truth. From the author of RESURRECTION and THE FOUNDLING.

About this title

From the Author

A love story, and an ancient conspiracy
This book is a wonderful romance. The setting is Old London Bridge (the one with houses on) and I wanted the reader to feel what it would really be like to live on the Bridge in medieval times - busy, smelly, never-sleeping, dangerous, enthralling, exciting! I needed to make long- ago history live as vividly as today, and the lives of long-dead people as real as our own lives. Alice Lacknail is beautiful and innocent, and this novel is her love story. She's a country girl living in a real village in Kent - I used old maps and parish records to bring the ancient setting to life in every detail. Which of the Mason boys will young Alice marry, Jack or his half- brother Nick? She chooses Jack, and in despair at losing her Nick goes away as a Templar knight to the Holy Land. Jack is chosen as the builder of London Bridge, and Alice lives happily as his wife, though without children. But then Nick comes home, a formidable warrior still in love with his childhood sweetheart Alice, obsessed with her, a changed man - changed by something he found in the Holy Land. The saddest incident in the book is when a young boy on London Bridge going home from school to lunch swings on a bridge-beam, slips, and drowns unnoticed. That's a true story taken from the coroner's records, that really happened. Even after seven hundred years the waste of that young life still strikes through. My favourite scene is the opening chapter when Alfred, though completely drunk at Christmas, saves a baby being swept beneath the bridge he's building and staggers proudly home to his wife with the infant, only to find it is his own illegitimate child. I loved writing this book. It's the third of the epic novels (starting with City and Resurrection) that leads from London to the Holy Land and the great themes of Sion and Era. Deus is a love story but very dark; it has sadness, but a happy ending. In it you will find murder, but life after death - and who says love doesn't live for ever?

About the Author

Philip Boast lives in Devon with his wife Rosalind and three children, Harry, Zoe and Jamie.

About this edition

• Publisher: Headline
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0747217254
• ISBN 13: 9780747217251
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 311