The Last Bookaneer

Book publishing has always been a risky business. But in the 19th century, a set of loose copyright laws and a hungry reading public created a uniquely dangerous situation: books published in one country could be transferred--quickly, secretly, illegally--to another country and published without compensating the author. Famously, though Dickens made a fortune from his English publishers in America he hardly saw a dime since countless houses simply printed his work illegally; a hypothetical writer in France might learn that in Italy her books were being sold without her knowledge, and be powerless to stop it. Authors may have suffered, yet in some sense it was a golden literary age. For readers looking for the latest books at the cheapest prices, it was a dream come true; for publishers, with no financial obligation to the authors, it was like printing money.

This extraordinary underground economy was only possible thanks to a select class of literary pirates, derisively labeled as 'bookaneers.' For decades the bookaneers--like the unflappable Pen Davenport, the obsessive Whiskey Bill, the monstrous Belial, the femme fatale Kitten--were the knights of the literary world: fluent in dozens of languages and in the handwriting of countless famed authors; experts in book production and spycraft; travelers of the globe that viewed themselves as an elite caste who upheld the foundations of world literature. But at the close of the 19th century, a new international treaty was signed that united copyrights across national borders, and in the process doomed the trade of the bookaneer to extinction.

In The Last Bookaneer, bestselling novelist Matthew Pearl--author of The Dante Club--takes readers on the last, fantastic adventure of the bookaneers. Pen Davenport is one of the greatest bookaneers of the century, a principled but tortured genius with an uncanny ability to see through human deception. His assistant is a humble bookseller named Fergins, who hears through a dying colleague of an unimaginably rich heist deep in the South Pacific. Narrated by Fergins as he delves deeper and deeper into his master's world, The Last Bookaneer is a tremendously readable thriller illuminated by the greatest literary lights of the nineteenth century.

Davenport's last case is a mighty one. Robert Louis Stevenson--the legendary author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped!, and The Extraordinary Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde--has retreated to the island of Samoa to recuperate from a deadly illness. Reports reach Fergins which confirm that the great writer is feverishly working on some final masterpiece, but the book is threatened by Stevenson's health and his self-imposed isolation. To steal Stevenson's manuscript from under his very nose, and to sell it around the world just months before the copyright law goes into effect: that would be a triumph for the last of the bookaneers. In the great vein of Sherlock Holmes, Davenport is absolutely on the case.

Yet Davenport's pursuit is impaired from the outset. By the time Davenport and Fergins arrive on Samoa, their bitter rival Belial has already enscounced himself with the great writer, masquerading as a progressive missionary to worm his way into Stevenson's confidences. And the picturesque island is far less idyllic than it first appears: a colonial war is brewing between the German occupiers, the allied British and American forces, and the natives whose elected leader has been replaced--violently--with a false king loyal to the colonial powers. Deepening their friendship with Stevenson, discovering his devotion to the native people and his mysterious plans high on his mountain estate, Davenport and Fergins begin to realize that that this famed adventure writer is himself playing a dangerous game on the island, with unpredictable consequences. And the crucial manuscript has still never been seen.

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