Demon Of The Air: An Aztec Mystery

Description

Mexico, 1517.Emperor Montezuma rules the known world. Daily canoes and trains of sweating bearers carry tribute to his island capital, Mexico-Tenochtitlán, while squadrons of ruthless warriors enforce his will. Gold, silver, cotton, jewels, and precious feathers change hands in his markets. The temples run with the blood of human sacrifices.All seems well, but Montezuma is troubled. Mysterious strangers have appeared in the East. Are they men or gods? Visions and rumors disturb his dreams. The soothsayers he turns to for guidance give him only enigmatic answers, and he knows he cannot trust his advisers---especially his chief minister, the unscrupulous Lord Feathered in Black.Yaotl, the chief minister's slave, is troubled, too. He was ordered to escort a sacrificial victim up the steps of the Great Pyramid, but the victim ran amok, uttering a bizarre and sinister prophecy and leaping to his death before the War-God's priests could cut out his heart. Then Yaotl learns that the emperor's soothsayers have vanished.The emperor senses a connection between these two events and orders Yaotl to find it---on pain of death if he fails. But it soon becomes clear that whatever the connection is, Yaotl's own master will stop at nothing---including murder---to keep it secret.To get to the truth will take all Yaotl's wits and will to survive. It will lead him into confrontations with the peril destined to overwhelm the whole Aztec world and with a monster from his own past - and into the hands of a sadistic killer.

About the Author

Simon Levack is a British author of historical mystery novels set in Precolumbian Mexico on the eve of the Spanish colonization of the Americas and feature as the protagonist Yaotl, a fictitious slave to Tlilpotonqui, the CihuacÃ³atl or chief minister in the Aztec state of Tenochtitlan under Hueyi Tlatoani, or Emperor, Moctezuma II. Demon of the Air won the Debut Dagger Award, given by the UK Crime Writers' Association, in 2000. He has also published short stories in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine featuring the same character and setting. His work has been noted for its historical detail, complex plotting, humour and often graphic violence. He has acknowledged australian historian and anthropologist Inga Clendinnen and the work of Bernardino de Sahagún, compiler of the Florentine Codex, as influences; he has also (in an interview with the Criminal History ezine) indicated that science fiction has been an influence on his work.

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