The Mistress and the Key

May 1, 2024

Mezrich follows up his adventure suspense novel The Midnight Ride with this sequel exploring the alchemical powers of Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. Card shark Hailey Gordon and ex-con Nick Patterson are on the hunt for Franklin and Revere's secrets, but so is "the Heiress," who will stop at nothing to beat them. Prepub Alert.

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October 21, 2024
Mezrich juggles Revolutionary era drama and modern-day espionage in this propulsive sequel to The Midnight Ride. Work on a construction project near Philadelphia’s City Hall has been suspended after site manager Jeff Pokowski unearthed a “cobbled-up cavern” dating back to the 18th century. Shortly after that discovery, a late-night security alert brings Pokowski back to the site, where he finds two corpses and a menacing stranger who kills him when he can’t explain how a mysterious engraving made its way to a local pawn shop. Meanwhile, ex-con Nick Patterson and MIT grad student–turned–card shark Hailey Gordon arrive in Philly from Boston, where they’re suspected of being involved in a 30-year-old art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Through a convoluted series of events, the pair gets wrapped up in Pokowski’s murder and in a showdown against an assassin known as “the Nobody,” all while being pursued by FBI agent Zack Lindwell. Mezrich stuffs the narrative full of fascinating historical tidbits—some real, some invented—including theories about a friendship between Benjamin Franklin and Amadeus Mozart, and rumors about links between the Liberty Bell and the practice of alchemy. The eclectic cast of characters, breakneck pacing, and unpredictable plotting make for a rollicking good time. Steve Berry fans will be riveted. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.

Starred review from October 15, 2024
Alchemy stages a comeback in this fast-moving modern-day thriller. In Philadelphia, a construction supervisor inspects a large underground space beneath a worksite and finds a mid-18th-century laboratory filled with beakers, oil lamps, hand cranks--and his two dead co-workers sitting in chairs. Then he's attacked and killed by a man looking for an engraving of a kite and a key. Thus begins this oddball thriller whose characters seek a philosopher's stone that will turn lead into gold. Mezrich loads the text with historical references to the likes of Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, Mozart, and Catharine Ray, one of Ben's actual lady friends. He also offers new twists on the stories of the Liberty Bell and Franklin's famous experiment with a kite and a key. Present-day protagonists Nick Patterson and Hailey Gordon are in Boston on the run from the law, suspects in a string of art thefts including the big 1990 heist at the Gardner Museum. Nick is a nonviolent ex-con who gets his gunshot wound stitched up in the basement of a seedy dentist and later survives an encounter with the humongousTyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the Boston Museum of Science. Hailey faked her high-school records to gain admission to MIT and excelled there as a grad student in applied math while she paid her bills by counting cards. In the opposite corner is the evil La Nadie--Spanish forThe Nobody--who looks so ordinary that no one notices her until it's too late. She works for the Family, which has ambitions both dastardly and grandiose. The frequent twists in this zany and well-researched story will keep the reader entertained and informed. If you've ever lain awake wondering about the Statue of Liberty's innards, or how many rivets Gustave Eiffel used in the construction of his eponymous iron tower in Paris, or how a particular Mozart composition looks on an oscilloscope, Mezrich puts those and many more questions to rest. The ending hints at a sequel, which would be most welcome. Light, quirky, and funny.

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