Transit of Mercury - Simon Jones

Think you know who you are? Think again! Within 48 hours Tom Talbot goes from high-flyer to no-hoper, city banker to jobless fraudster, pinstripe commuter to terror suspect. His dog is killed and his home is ransacked, a ghostly Tibetan monk and an enigmatic Oxford professor give him tantalising glimpses of a forgotten destiny.

As well as an identity crisis of Jungian proportions, visions of the past link him to a girl murdered on the Silk Road, the gifts of the Magi and the house of Medici.

Concurrently, in New York, young hotshot lawyer Miranda Maddingley learns that her wealthy uncle has died suddenly, leaving his fortune to a cousin she’s never heard of, and leaving her with just an old ring. Smelling a rat, she tries to contact her cousin but learns he works deep inside the Vatican. Meanwhile, she unearths a mysterious family connection to Amerigo Vespucci, his voyages to America and a tragic Medici love triangle.

Miranda meets Tom in Florence where she has fallen under the sinister Count Scala’s spell. In a race against time, following cryptic clues and supernatural phenomena around iconic buildings and works of art, with gangsters and fanatics in hot pursuit, they finally reach an astounding apocalyptic climax.