Death and the Devil

It's the year 1260 and the great cathedral - the most ambitious building in all of Christendom - is rising above the streets of Cologne. Far below its soaring spires and flying buttresses, an assassin of unnatural talent surveys his new hunting ground.

More shadow than man, the assassin is quick to take his first life. But there is a witness to his crime: a flame-haired thief known as Jacob the Fox. Justly terrified by the black-clad spectre, Jacob runs for his life, convinced that he's pursued by the Angel of Death itself.

For all his street-smart cunning, the wily Fox cannot shake off the assassin - a cruel, efficient murderer who favours a pistol-grip crossbow as his weapon of choice. Fate, injury and desperation lead Jacob to seek help from a beautiful clothes dyer, her drunken rascal of a father, and her learned uncle, a man of God who loves a battle of wits almost as much as he loves a bottle of wine.

With the threat of an untimely death at the end of a crossbow bolt never far way, Jacob's unlikely cabal find themselves faced with a conspiracy born of an unquenchable thirst for revenge, a conspiracy that threatens to tear Cologne apart and stain the city with blood.

Frank Schatzing is the author of the international bestseller The Swarm, which turned him into Germany's most successful thriller writer in decades. A winner of the 2004 Corine Prize, and the 2005 German Science Fiction Prize, Schatzing lives and works in Cologne.

Cologne, 1260. The great cathedral, the most ambitious building in all Christendom, is rising above the city. In its shadow seethes a society in ferment: traumatised Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, religious tensions posed to explode into violence, a burgeoning merchant class that despises the old aristocracy and is determined to seize power. Against this backdrop Jacob the Fox, a flame-haired petty thief, witnesses a murder - the cathedral's architect, pushed to his death from the scaffold by a black-clad assassin. Soon Jacob is on the run, convinced the Angel of Death is on his trail, as the killer pursues him through medieval Cologne's seedy underworld. To survive he must uncover a vengeful conspiracy that threatens to tear the city apart and stain the sacred project with blood.

It's the year 1260 and the great cathedral - the most ambitious building in all of Christendom - is rising above the streets of Cologne. Far below its soaring spires and flying buttresses, an assassin of unnatural talent surveys his new hunting ground. More shadow than man, the assassin is quick to take his first life. But there is a witness to his crime: a flame-haired thief known as Jacob the Fox. Justly terrified by the black-clad spectre, Jacob runs for his life, convinced that he's pursued by the Angel of Death itself. For all his street-smart cunning, the wily Fox cannot shake off the assassin - a cruel, efficient murderer who favours a pistol-grip crossbow as his weapon of choice. Fate, injury and desperation lead Jacob to seek help from a beautiful clothes dyer, her drunken rascal of a father, and her learned uncle, a man of God who loves a battle of wits almost as much as he loves a bottle of wine. With the threat of an untimely death at the end of a crossbow bolt never far way, Jacob's unlikely cabal find themselves faced with a conspiracy born of an unquenchable thirst for revenge, a conspiracy that threatens to tear Cologne apart and stain the city with blood.

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