Black Market Truth

Book excerpt: Vatican Inspector Domenico Conti is called to St. Paul's Basilica in Rome the morning after a break-in that leaves the sarcophagus empty and its guard dead. Conti is told to find the perpetrators but, more importantly, to recover the contents of the tomb. Dr. Dana McCarter, newly appointed director of the Advanced Institute for the Study of Antiquity at NYU, has her own secrets. Her groundbreaking work on the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle was cause for her appointment to head the billion dollar initiative to unearth the secret roots of Western civilization. What no one suspects is that her success is based on an addiction to illegal trafficking in black market manuscripts. When a mysterious stranger gives Dana a tantalizing glimpse of a truly surprising scroll, she becomes obsessed with tracking down its source. Conti follows the trail of deceit to Dana's doorstep and the two form an unlikely team, each with their own motives for recovering the scrolls, which turn out to be five of Aristotle's lost dialogues. In their batle for the scrolls, Conti and Dana must confront their own demons as well as two powerfully evil forces:the Dionysian cultists who want to keep the scrolls hidden and the Muslim jihadists who want to reveal them in order to discredit Chritianity once and for all.