The Bunting Quest
STEVEN MARCUSON
HYBRID, $26.95
Steven Marcuson, a map store owner in Western Australia, has leveraged his obsession with a historical curiosity into a page-turning thriller. The object in question – Heinrich Bunting's 1581 map of the world – is an odd piece of cartography even for its time: Madagascar is missing, for instance, and the boot of Italy twists the wrong way around. Its chief claim to fame, though, is a strikingly accurate depiction of the West Australian coastline, long before Europeans got there. In The Bunting Quest, the map is stolen from antique map dealer Nick Lawrance in a targeted burglary, leading him into a dangerous web of mystery and murder over a religious secret hundreds of years old. It's written in the same vein as The Da Vinci Code, though it's more deeply imagined, pacier, and better written.