The Garden of the Enigmas
What deadly secrets are there hidden under a simple bouquet of flowers?
In mid-19th century, industrial London, Rick Hunter is a bounty hunter who survives selling himself to the highest bidder, moved by a dark desire for revenge.
After escaping a deadly ambush, a clue leads him to an exclusive flower shop, "Passion of the East", whose widow owner, an expert in the language of flowers, has won the favour of her powerful aristocrats clients, who eagerly go to her to communicate their secret passions through hidden messages in the plants.
But what seems like a lustful entertainment, in reality hides a sophisticated cryptographic system related to extremely dangerous characters: the ambitious Gustav Gruner, consul of Germany; Joe Sanders, an unscrupulous criminal; Daphne Loveray, a beautiful and enigmatic woman married to an undesirable man, and Karum, a sadist native to the colonies.
From that moment on, a frenzied series of crimes is unleashed in a city that seems only to live for the opening of the first World's Fair, the moment when the British Empire will show the world the full extent of its power, or it might collapse if Rick Hunter fails to uncover the truth.
An absorbing historic thriller set in Victorian England
LONDON
At the beginning of the Victorian era, when strict morality prevented the manifestation of passions, floral arrangements became the ideal medium for sending messages. King Charles II of England himself established his own code inspired by the Turkish harems, and instructed in the hidden art the Hartford family of Edinburgh, his personal gardeners.
For two centuries, the Hartford stealthily guarded "the secret of flowers," until widow Hellen Hartford moved to London to run the Passion of the East, the flower shop hall that the nobility would choose to make the most suggestive messages. Thus, under their exotic branches, the most sordid stories of lust and sex began to circulate in the sophisticated parties of Kensington Palace.
But not only those kinds of messages ...
Ada Lovelace
The enchantress of numbers
The inspiration of a novel character.
Endowed with extraordinary intelligence and captivating beauty, Ada Lovelace inherited from her passion for mathematics from her mother, and her libertine character from from her father, Lord Byron. At eighteen years old, she began attending the parties of London's high society, where she met scientist Charles Babbage, a relationship that prompted her to conceive the idea of building a computer. Her marriage to the Viscount of Ockham, who opposed her passion for science, plunged her into a depression that did not placate her ambition to study.
Expert in programming and cryptography, in the 1840s, Ada starred in scandals, due to her affectionate relationships with other men.
His mathematical research was published in the journal Scientific Memoirs in September 1843, with the title "Sketch of the analytical engine invented by Charles Babbage" and although his work was despised by his colleagues, today he is recognized as the first computer programmer of the world.
The BOW STREET RUNNERS
The
Bow street runners were a bunch of mercenaries, half police, half criminals, hired on numerous occasions to solve the most horrible crimes.
Rick Hunter, former employee of the East India Company, was one of the first.
And he took advantage of his work to end his revenge ...
AND THE FIRST GREAT UNIVERSAL EXHIBITION
In 1851 the inauguration of the most lavish commercial, technological and informative event that the world had ever contemplated, took place.
More than 14,000 exhibitors from 42 countries showed their products along the gigantic auditoriums and the glass transept of a portentous building that seemed to float among the trees of Hyde Park.
A unique scenario for a crime.
THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
The East India Company was a private company that, for more than two centuries, and at the hands of ambitious bankers and investors, sheared India and Southeast Asia without anyone controlling their excesses.
