XIV century. The city of Barcelona is at its moment of greatest prosperity; has grown towards the Ribera, the humble neighborhood of fishermen, whose inhabitants decide to build, with the money of some and the effort of others, the largest Maria cathedral ever known. A construction that moves parallel to the hazardous story of Arnau, son of a peasant serf, who flees from the abuses of his feudal lord and takes refuge in Barcelona, where he becomes a citizen and, with it, a free man. While his best friend and adopted brother Joan studies to become a priest, young Arnau becomes a member of the guild of the stone-workers, soldier and moneychanger. A strenuous life which leads him from the misery of the fugitive to nobility and wealth. But with this privileged position he also gets the envy of his peers, who devise a sordid plot that puts his life in the hands of the Inquisition. He finds himself face-to-face with his own brother. Will he lose his life just as his beloved Cathedral of the Sea is finally completed?
A man travels through time to win back his lost love. A woman in Victorian London, unhappy, falls for a man from the future. Meanwhile, a police officer hunts a time-traveling murderer. Are the time travelers real, or is it all an illusion?
<blockquote>In the tradition of Caleb Carr's <em>The Alienist</em> and Eric Larsen's <em>The Devil in the White City</em> comes a gripping tale of murder and the art of crime solving, atmospherically set during the 1889 Paris World's Fair. </blockquote>It is 1889, and the entire world breathlessly anticipates the Paris World's Fair and the opening of Monsieur Eiffel's iconic tower. The Twelve Detectives—a society of the twelve most famous, compelling, and dazzling detectives from around the world—have been asked to discuss the secrets of their trade as part of the fair's lineup of events. The Twelve travel to Paris to convene as a single body for the first time, but also, if some whispers are to be believed, to debate the very philosophy that underlies their pursuit of the world's most wanted criminals. But one detective is conspicuously absent: the legendary founding member of The Twelve, Renato Craig, will not attend. In his place he sends his novice assistant, Sigmundo Salvatrio—son of a shoemaker, a lifelong detective-arts devotee, and the only remaining student of Craig's famed Academy for Detectives in Buenos Aires. Salvatrio arrives in Paris, carrying a secret message meant only for Craig's best friend and cofounder of The Twelve, the brilliant, brooding, and fiercely competitive Viktor Arzaky. When a member of The Twelve is discovered dead at the foot of the gleaming Eiffel Tower, the first in what turns into a series of grisly murders, Arzaky and Salvatrio find themselves in a race against time around glorious fin de siècle Paris, encountering all manner of secret societies, solving philosophical puzzles, while also trying to save a dangerously beautiful woman. The pair soon realizes that the stakes involved are unimaginably high; they must not only catch the stalking murderer but also alter the fate of their precious brotherhood. Written in a strikingly original voice, and poignantly evoking a world about to lose its innocence forever, The Paris Enigma opens a window onto crime solving's early days, when wit, common sense, and intelligence were the only tools a detective could rely on.
