About The Devil to Pay by Gary Blackwood
Discounted to $1.99 from March 11-15.
As the conflict in Vietnam heats up, Simon Hannay is pursuing his Masters in Comparative Literature at a Midwest university, teaching karate on the side and doing his best to avoid the draft. He’s not overly excited about his thesis… until he stumbles upon an encrypted Renaissance journal that’s been hidden for decades in the rare book room.
Simon, who’s been fascinated by codes and ciphers since he was a kid, convinces his advisor to let him use the mysterious codex as his thesis topic. But first he has to decipher it—and, as he soon learns, that’s going to be a formidable task. To add to his problems, an unidentified rival he calls the Mystery Man is desperate to get his hands on the codex—so desperate that he ransacks Simon’s apartment and even drugs and interrogates him and his advisor.
With the help of Gabriela, a Brazilian classmate, Simon finally hits upon the key to the cipher. Together they struggle to unravel and translate the text, which was penned by a 16th-century Portuguese fortune-hunter. In the process, they learn the secrets the codex contains, and why the Mystery Man is so determined to steal it.
Buy the book, and follow the author on social media:
Learn more about the writer. Visit the Author’s Website.
Like the Authors Facebook Fan Page.
Author Bio:
I grew up in Western PA and bummed around the country for decades before settling down on the beautiful North Shore of Nova Scotia. I got my first encouraging letter from an editor at age 16, sold my first story at 19, sold my first novel at 40, and have been going strong ever since. I think I'm up to 36 published books now, with three more looking for a home. (My long-time editor retired, leaving me an orphan; cue the violins) My most popular title is a YA novel, The Shakespeare Stealer, which has appeared on numerous Best Books lists and been translated into lots of other languages.