The Book of Air and Shadows: A Novel

By Michael Gruber

A fire destroys a New York City rare bookstore—and reveals clues to a treasure worth killing for. . . . A disgraced scholar is found tortured to death. . . . And those pursuing the most valuable literary find in history are about to cross from the harmless mundane into inescapable nightmare.

From the acclaimed, bestselling author of Tropic of Night comes a breathtaking thriller that twists, shocks, and surprises at every turn as it crisscrosses centuries, from the glaring violence of today into the dark shadows of truth and lies surrounding the greatest writer the world has ever known.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061739538

Michael Gruber

New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber is the author of five acclaimed novels. He lives in Seattle.

Reviews for The Book of Air and Shadows

[karenduff · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

really did not like this,found the characters completely unlikable.didn't care if they lived or died

[bravenewbks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The things that I liked most about this book are fairly superficial: one of the main characters is named Mishkin (one of my cats is named Myshkin), and he also happens to be a lawyer (I am a lawyer, and therefore predisposed to like books wherein lawyers are reasonably well-portrayed). It begins in a used bookstore, and ultimately is a book about books, or, more precisely, a book about old books, with ancient manuscripts in secretary hand concealed in their covers, with heavy doses of cryptography and suspected forgery and the life-threatening adventures that necessarily follow.

I enjoyed this as an audiobook; the reader was skilled at voicing different characters and had a pleasant speaking style. The one drawback is that the Bracegirdle letters, written as they are in archaic style, became somewhat tedious to listen to. I suspect they might have been more palatable in written form.

Also -- 15 CDs! I appreciate that this was unabridged but that many CDs was a lot to keep track of, and took me almost 3 months to get through on my daily commute.

[moriquen · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm afraid that this book was a bit of a disappointement to me. Even though 'on paper' it seemed to hold all of my favourite things to read about. Shakespeare, an old mysterious manuscript, the treasure hunt, the different characters and different stories that all came together in the end. But there were many things that bugged me about this book. This book could have been much better if it had been about half its current size. I don't mind large books if they have something to say, but most of the rambling seemed to be a character sketch of Jake Mishkin. And after a while you really get tired of his ramblings about how deprived he really is and how many women he slept with.The other main character Crosetti is also not entirely likeable. With his constant talk about the movies ... He makes you feel like you've seen this book before in movie form, but were to stupid to remember it. (The way he constantly keeps predicting what is going to happen, because it's all happened before in the movies.)I did like the ending however and wished that the entire book had the speed and the momentum of the last chapters, but sadly it doesn't. I really thought this would be my kind of book, but it turned out completely different.

[bobnolin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable, though I could have done without the bigotry and overuse of sex. Perhaps Gruber is trying to add "color" with all the Italian/Jewish/Russian personalities, but all of that could have been removed and the book would be none the worse for it, in my opinion. Just saying someone is Irish or Italian doesn't tell me much, usually, and yet it's a defining characteristic for Gruber. I'm hoping this is just old-school thinking, and will pass away along with Gruber's generation. I nearly gave up on it early on during the extended descriptions of Jake's sexual addiction. We get it, he's got a problem, you've made your point...can we move on? The historical documents lent a lot of interest to the book, making it seem that much more plausible. The 16th century documents were very well done, very convincing. It became almost like a time travel story, with characters reaching across time, sort of like Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book. And like Willis, the modern day portion is, at times, a bit over the top. A reviewer on Amazon said Gruber is mixing the literary thriller genre with the potboiler, and we are to understand that is why things get so...exaggerated at times. If that's true (and it does fit), I have to say it was a little too much of an inside joke for this reader to enjoy. I'm not a metafictional kind of guy, I guess.The characters live and breathe on the page, so one has to look at how they acted, since they were so real. Let's start with Carolyn Rolly. Very hard to empathize with a woman who would abandon her children to a violent abuser. And why did she find it easier to turn to the Jewish Mafia (or the Russian Jewish...whatever) for help, than to, say, the police? So she's an immoral person, she makes bad choices, and at the end she gets rewarded. I don't think I like that. The other character that bothered me was one we spent a LOT of time with, Jake Mishkin. I would've liked this book a lot more if he had had a believable epiphany at the end. Instead, in a short, let's-get-this-book-over-with epilogue, he's suddenly kicked his sexual addiction (which the author has hammered into our heads for four hundred pages). Huh? Suddenly he "gets" what love is all about? I didn't buy it, so that was disappointing. Which brings up the question: who was this book about? Jake? Al? Richard Bracegirdle? Looking back now, I'm thinking this book may have been much better had the Jake point of view been removed completely, replaced by a third-person chapter here and there. His chapters don't advance the plot much, when you think about it. They compel you to keep reading, I suppose, to find out why he's sitting in a lakeside cottage waiting to be killed. The story really has little to do with this very unsympathetic guy, and yet we get hundreds of pages of his first-person thoughts. He's a yucky guy. Did we really need him? Maybe, if he'd performed some selfless act and earned redemption. Instead, what? He keeps his money. He gets his wife back (probably). I can't help thinking this could have made been made much better. Gruber says (on his website) that the plot came to him while meeting with an IP (intellectual property) lawyer. The plot, naturally, came to include said IP lawyer. Perhaps a step back would have revealed that the IP lawyer was really a minor character. Overall, an interesting read, but more for plot and not so much for the characters, who were unlikable (mostly), and didn't follow the rules for good, moral fiction. (see John Gardner)

[jerry2book-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked it especially the history the references to Shakespeare. It did get quite crazy at the end.

[benjclark · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unknown Shakespeare play and intrigue! Present Day New York! Rich people! Film nerd! Nazis! Jews! Jewish Nazis! Super Models! If you don't like sex in your books, stay away. Writing was good, story was decent. The Biblio-ness was also OK. Got a shade too strung out to remain suspenseful for me, or remain a mystery. I liked the Shakespeare storyline-- some of those chapters were the most interesting ones. The "main" character, Jake Mishkin, is too ridiculous for words. Upon reflection 3 stars may be a bit generous.

[bcquinnsmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Let's get right to it: who would like this book? I'm a sucker for bibliomysteries, and others who like them would enjoy this. If you like codes & cyphers, you'd like this one as well. If you enjoy a good mystery, you'll like this one, too.The story is told from different narrators: first, there is the main character, Jake Mishkin, who is an attorney specializing in intellectual property. Second is Albert Crosetti, who wants to go to film school, and sees life and civilization as we know it as having been shaped by the movies we watch. There are also letters from one Richard Bracegirdle, a man who is dying from wounds in the wars between the Catholics & Protestants back in the time of Shakespeare, and is sending a letter home to his wife, knowing he will never see her again. In fact, the story focuses on a search for a previously-unknown work (play) by William Shakespeare. As the book opens, a bookstore that sells rare volumes next to a greasy spoon in New York starts going up in flames as some grease dumped in a hole at the restaurant catches fire. Albert, along with a co-worker, Carolyn Rolly, takes out the most valuable works at the bookstore, but they can't get everything. The next day, Rolly & Albert go to the store and try to retrieve anything salvagable, and it is while they are cleaning up a volume of a rare set of works, that Albert discovers some papers tucked into the binding. He has trouble with understanding what he's reading, but eventually he comes to realize that what he has is a letter by the above-mentioned Bracegirdle.Meanwhile, Jake is sitting in a lake cabin up in the Adirondacks, at the home of his best friend. It is night, and any moment he expects to be attacked by a gang of ruthless killers. In fact, Jake's contribution to the book is the story of how he got into this whole mess to begin with. His part of the story began when a visiting professor of English, one Nicholas Bulstrode, came into his office and asked about the legal ownership of an undiscovered work that could be potentially valuable not only in terms of its discovery, but in terms of cash money. Eventually Jake puts Bulstrode's property into the company's safe deposit box, but that's when things start going haywire. Bulstrode is found dead and there's evidence he's been tortured; now Jake finds himself in a mess, since the bad guys know what he has.I have to say that at times this book was so silly with its plot devices & its far-fetched plot, but really, I had to keep on reading just to find out what happens. Gruber throws in a twist or two or three and it's one of those stories that deserve the warning of "sit down and buckle up -- it's going to be a bumpy ride."An awesome book, and this writer can pull it off. If you haven't read his previous works, do yourself a favor and go get them.

[beccac220 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not what I expected. The characters weren't as well developed as they could have been and I actually found the main character, Jake, extremely annoying. The plot was interesting and the mysterious manuscript kept me reading, but the characters really dampened the experience for me.

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am a sucker for literary thrillers, novels that mix books with suspense. Sometimes these novels pay off big, such as the Cliff Janeway series of mysteries written by John Dunning. Sometimes they don't, such as "Codex" by Lev Grossman."The Book of Air and Shadows" by Michael Gruber, while far from a total success, nevertheless comes closer to the former than the latter.What would be the greatest literary discovery you can imagine? How about an unknown William Shakespeare play in the author's own handwriting? In Gruber's novel, Albert Crosetti and Carolyn Rolly, two young employees of a New York rare books dealer, discover references to such a play in letters found in the binding of a damaged book. They take the letters to an expert, who buys them for a relatively small sum, then later turns up dead. Meanwhile, Carolyn has disappeared, and Russian gangsters have joined the search for the missing play.Another key character in the novel is Jake Mishkin, the son of a gangster, who works as an intellectual property attorney. The Shakespeare expert gave the letters to him just before his death, and the Russians now want him to hand them over. Instead he teams up with Crosetti to try to find the missing play.The plot gets rather convoluted, and it's easier to believe there might really be an unknown work by Shakespeare than some of the things that go on in this novel. Even so, "The Book of Air and Shadows' makes entertaining summer reading.

[dougcornelius_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A tale of deceit, fraud, love and infidelity as a motley crew of characters chase what may be undiscovered play of Shakespeare. The audiobook is well narrated. Stephen Hoye adds just a slight variation to each character to help you tell them apart.

[indygo88 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's been a little while since I've read a thriller...this kind of falls into the historical/mystery/thriller genre. As I was reading I kept thinking that I could totally picture this on the big screen -- not sure if that's a good or bad thing. I had mixed feelings about this one. The plot seemed very alluring, yet I was a little disappointed. I would've liked to have seen more elaboration on the mystery side of things and less action w/ the good guys/bad guys, but that's just me. The main character, Jake Mishkin, was for the most part a very unlikeable chracter, and while I know he was supposed to be, it got a little too annoying after a while. I found myself a little confused in certain parts of the book & had to back up and re-read a paragraph or phrase to reorient myself at times. And there were aspects that seemed a little too unbelievable, but then again, I think you get that with any thriller-type novel. Overall, I really enjoyed the plotline of this book, but I can't quite put my finger on why it disappointed me somewhat.

[kerns222 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Still trying to figure out how Gruber plotted out this thing. The plot has 4 layers with a lot of glue in between: Layer one--Hiding in the mountain cabin and waiting for the mobsters to kill the lawyer, Layer 2--Waiting for the ex-smuggler and cannon maker to die after spying on Shakespeare for the Puritans and later getting shot during the English Civil War, Layer 3--the kid accountant in the NY bookstore finding the secret manuscript, Layer 4--the lawyer telling how he got involved and why he is unfaithful to his perfect Swiss wife and does power lifting. And dont forget his Nazi mother and Jewish mobster moneyman dad hiding in Israel working/toying with the Russian Jewish mobsters in New York. And yes the mystery woman/women who drag the lawyer and the kid accountant through hoops. Way too much unless you really pay attention. Also, a couple extras: secret codes to work on if you have spare brain cells after tracking the plot for two hundred pages and , a bonus, some neat techniques for saving old books.

[snukes-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Though the story was intriguing, I couldn't make myself like any of the characters, and that is what usually makes or breaks a book for me.

[riikkat_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

At the beginning of the book we find Jake Mishkin, an intellectual property lawyer, hiding on a remote cabin and waiting for a bunch of Russian gangsters to come and finish him off. As the story progresses, part of me begins to wish they would hurry the hell up already. At least that would save me from reading all of Mishkin's ramblings about the sorry state of his life. But more on that later.The story itself starts with a burning bookshop. While trying to salvage a set of books after the fire, Al Crosetti and his colleague/girlfriend candidate Carolyn Rolly find an old manuscript in the binding of the books. The manuscript is written by Richard Bracegirdle, a 17th century busybody, who has among other things gotten himself mixed up with the spying of one William Shakespeare. Bracegirdle goes on to suggest that there would still be an unpublished play by Shakespeare to be found, lying around somewhere on the British countryside. To make matters interesting, the hiding place of the play is revealed in a series of letters, all written in cypher. After Crosetti is swindled to sell the manuscript to a professor for peanuts, Rolly disappears and Crosetti is left alone to crack the code of the cypher with his clever mother and her band of friends. The professor is later murdered, right after leaving the manuscript in the possession of Jake Mishkin, which brings him along to the intrigue.Doesn't sound that bad right? Well it wouldn't be if the story didn't alternate between Crosetti and Mishkin with the letters of Bracegirdle, all written in Olde Englishe, thrown in for good measure. Now while Crosetti, who actually gets things done and the story going onward, is a likeable, sympathetic character, Mishkin is anything but. For some reason the author has deemed it necessary for the reader to know the whole of Mishkin's life's story, a little of which, in my opinion, has any relevance to the underlying story of the manuscript. Since all Mishkin seems to have is problems, especially when it comes to relationships with his mother, father, siblings, ex-wife, children, lovers and well, basically everybody, it really starts to get on your nerves after awhile.There were some parts of the book that I liked though. I thought the last 1/3 of the story was fairly exiting, if only because the pace was finally picking up and Mishkin had finally finished his recital. And I liked Crosetti. In fact I wish the book had been about him, which would have made the story half the length and twice as interesting.

[gary10_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Basic plot line is that a couple of poor employees at a book binding operation stumble upon a 17th century manuscript that purports to not only provide a wealth of background information on William Shakespeare, but also suggests that a previously unknown play written by Shakespeare may exist. The employees quickly get enmeshed in an increasingly complicated, and dangerous race to get access to what would be--if actually found--the most valuable piece of literature in the world. Along the way there is of course murder, mayhem and even a romance.

[5hrdrive · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An antique bookshop, a lost play by William Shakespeare, forgers, spies, secret codes, a treasure hunt, double-crossings, a femme-fatale, and a humdinger of a show-down between the bad guys and the not-quite good guys at the end? Sign me up! This was a very pleasant surprise for a book that I found for seventy-five cents at my local library's book sale.

[wbwilburn5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was a let down that I do not think I would recommend to others.

[readafew · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first book I've read by Michael Gruber, and while the story telling wasn't bad I never really got into it. I didn't really like any of the characters, and everyone had several big blind spots which strongly affected their judgment, and made me grit my teeth. The book was good enough to get me to the end without pulling out my hair but if I wasn't listening to it on my commute I might not have finished it at all. It just wasn't very engaging. What kept my interest was the Bracegirdle letters that took place in the time of Shakespeare.We follow Jake Mishkin and Albert Crosetti through this book, though most is told through the past musings of Mishkin, except for the trips to the past where Bracegirdle told of his life in a letter to his wife and son. Overall not awful but I doubt I will purposely pick up another one of his books.

[dancingstarfish · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am currently reading this book, and I find myself getting bored and putting it down. Sometimes I'm really interested in the story, but sometimes the author just loses that spark that makes you want to keep reading. Especially when you hit the letters that are printed in between the other two plot lines in the book, those seem to be almost walls for me, I end up coming to one and stopping, and picking up the book later when I happen to want to try again. I don't know if I'll finish this.

[tjarda_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Jake Mishkin is an IP lawyer. Albert Crosseti works at a bookstore. They do not know eachother, but they will hunt for an unknown manuscript of Shakespeare. Or is it a fake?I found it very hard to get into this book, because of the changing perspective. And not only the varying perspective made it hard, the timeline in which the two maincharacters appear does not run equally. When you can get into this book it is a nice read, nothing special though. We have all seen it before in the Da Vinci code, the rule of four etc.

[laurochka-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Weird book. Couldn't decide what it was meant to be - the Shakespeare conspiracy was really secondary to the lives of the main protaganists.
OK but not what I'd expected!

[tangledthread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Almost a cross between The Thirteenth Tale and The DaVinci Code. However I liked both of those books better than this one.

[bionerdaz · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Also on my Goodreads review:The book dragged for the first 100 or so pages, and I started to care about the characters more, esp. Albert Crosetti and his family, Jake, hmm, not so much, he was the character you kinda love to hate, but hope he finds redemption for his lost soul. The plot and pace also picked up dramatically at this point and gets more exciting (think car chases in Europe, fancy jet planes, escaping out of hotel windows). The climax was kinda muddled and you couldn't tell if the whole thing was a big hoax or not, which detracted greatly from the enjoyment of the book. Also the long and lengthy Bracegirdle letters (written in old english style) did not add anything to the book but confusion and for me, only gave me a headache. It would have been better if the author added only small excerpts (maybe a paragraph at most) of the letters which would have led to less confusion and head pain. The style and descriptions remind me of why I do not like Tom Clancy, but others may find this type of book wonderful in it's lengthy details and descriptions, just not me. There were some enjoyable moments in this book, so while I did not hate it, there were too many times I had to struggle to get through the book.

[oregonreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After a bookstore fire, letters are discovered written by Richard Bracegirdle, an anti-papist who claims to have spied on William Shakespeare. Also found are some encrypted pages that seem to be the clue to finding a lost play by Shakespeare. The story follows a bookstore employee and an IP lawyer and their families as they hunt for the treasure and encounter Russian and Jewish gangsters also in on the hunt. The plot contains many twists and turns and surprises. It is a very well-written story with lots of ideas. I really enjoyed the unfolding of the mystery as well as being intrigued by the characters even though not many were really likeable. The ending left a little to be desired, I had a couple of unresolved questions but it is still highly recommended.

[t1peggy · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

OMG! Average rating is 3 1/2 stars on Library Thing. I can't agree. This book is thick and somewhat entertaining, thus my two stars. Its a mystery, involves history - one reviewer called it a literary thriller. And I wanted to like this book, but the conclusion was just nowhere in the realm of possibilities. And after hanging in for 400 plus pages thinking the author would pull it off, it spoiled the whole book for me. Plus, none of the main characters were likeable - all deeply self-involved. The guy that finds the manuscript, and gets involved in a hunt for lost William Shakespeare play .. Albert Crosetti.. was a likable character until he ...well I don't want to spoil the book, but he turned a blind eye to a situation that involved characters that needed intervention badly. Thus he became as self-involved as the other main characters. I listened to this book on audio and I would recommend that over reading the hard copy. There are three narrators of this story, one is in Shakespeare's time and because of the spelling of the old English words is hard to read. (Lost a CD, had to go to hard copy).While I will read more books that are described as "literary thrillers" - its very unlikely I'll read an of Michael Gubers books.

[auntieknickers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[book: The Book of Air and Shadows] was recommended to me, I would even say, urged upon me, by a friend whose literary judgment I respect immensely, even if we don't always agree. (I have yet, for example, to make it through [book: An Instance of the Fingerpost]. In this case, our tastes coincided. The quality of the writing often made me pause to savor a felicitous phrase, and the plotting was excellent -- just when I would think I had it all figured out, Gruber would throw in something new. The characters were many-layered people, who actually grew and changed during the course of the book. I admire the device of having two protagonists who are working together, yet sometimes at cross-purposes, and without always being completely straight with each other. Life is short and books are many, so I probably will not pursue Mr. Gruber's ghost-writing adventures, but I am planning to read [book: The Forgery of Venus] before long.

[citygirl_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well-developed and fascinating main character, powerlifting IP lawyer whose father is a Jewish gangster and mother the child of a Nazi officer. Other interesting family members, too, well-characterized. Layered: the questions of trust and deceptions are woven throughout this thriller, are any of us what we seem? History: we get a first person account of life and religious politics during Shakespeare's day. And it's a page-turner. This is for anyone who likes smart mysteries. I will say that the frequent forays into letters purportedly written with 17th century spelling and usage were a little off-putting at first, but fortunately the story the letters tell makes it eventually worthwhile

[penguin7316 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Recommended by a reader as better than Geraldine Brooks 'People of the book'. However, I found the prose much less inspiring and the storyline quite confusing especially at the beginning. However, its main protagonist was an intellectual property lawyer so I am going to suggest it to my son who has nearly finished his law degree and is interested in this area of law.

[alexlux_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Increasingly slow, the sections of olde English slowed it down even more. Boring and not worth the effort.

[book58lover · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I found this book confusing and not too entertaining.