In New York, London-based forensic accounting wizard Cidro Medina meets with former English Renaissance scholar turned sleuth Kate Morgan to discuss the corpse he found in his home. A thief broke into Cidro’s home to steal a leather-bound volume of 16th-century intelligence reports written in cipher, but was trapped by cops so he chose poison instead of prison. Kate who is a deep operative for a United States Intelligence Agency investigates the sudden interest in the tome.

In England Kate begins breaking the book’s code and finds herself on the verge of not solving today’s mystery, but a cold case involving the sudden death of Elizabethan most popular playwright Christopher Marlowe in 1593. She learns that Christopher lived a double life using his writings as a cover for his undercover espionage work to expose smuggling. Kate is also asked to look into an eleven million dollar art deal that triggered alerts of a possible black market sale. Billionaire art dealer Luca de Tolomei sold an antiquity to Iranian senior intelligence officer Hamad Azadi. Unbeknownst to Kate, she is the pawn of revenge by a person targeting her father, U.S. Senator Donovan Morgan.

Though the story line is all over the place, THE INTELLIGENCER is a fine thriller that rotates chapters globally mostly in the present, but also includes stops in the late sixteenth century. Because of the constant shifts of focus, the story line takes time to develop; thus the action-packed thrill seekers might find the secondary plotting tedious while those in the audience who appreciate insightful filler will enjoy the sidebars. Leslie Silbert writes an interesting tale with a wonderful premise that is overloaded but fun to follow.

Harriet Klausner