An historic homicide secret in line with actual events.

Who would wish to homicide the world’s most renowned thinker?

Turns out: approximately everyone.

In 1649, Descartes used to be invited through the Queen of Sweden to develop into her courtroom thinker. even though he was once the world’s top thinker, his lifestyles had via this element fallen aside. He was once fifty three, penniless, dwelling in exile in Amsterdam, on my own. With a lot trepidation yet now not a lot selection, he arrived in Stockholm in mid-October.

Shortly thereafter he used to be dead.

Pneumonia, they acknowledged. yet who may think that? there have been simply too many people of curiosity who desired to see Descartes useless, and for too many purposes. That such a lot of of those people have been in Stockholm—thanks to the Gala the Queen was once throwing to rejoice the top of the bad Thirty Years' War—made the legit tale all of the much less believable. demise by way of poisoning was once the unofficial observe at the cobblestone.

Enter Adrien Baillet. A likeable misfit with a mysterious backstory, he arrives simply because the French Ambassador desperately wishes an neutral Frenchman to end up that Descartes died of common causes—lest the “murder” in Lutheran Sweden of France’s nice Catholic thinker set off colicky French boy-King Louis XIV to reignite that lousy warfare. Baillet hesitatingly is of the same opinion to enquire Descartes’s loss of life, understanding that if—or when—he screws up, he might be individually chargeable for the War’s Thirty-First 12 months.

But fixing the secret of Descartes’s demise (Baillet quickly learns) calls for first fixing the secret of Descartes’s existence, with all its risky secrets and techniques ... None of it's easy, as approximately everyone seems to be a suspect and not anyone should be relied on. Nor does it aid that he needs to do all of it lower than the menacing gaze of Carolus Zolindius, the terrifying Swedish Chancellor with the unusually intimidating limp.

But Baillet by some means perseveres, outstanding each person as he figures all of it out—all how to the explosive end.