The Mirror Thief

Three parallel stories happening in 2003, 1958, and 1592, all in places named Venice.

In 2003, an ex-military policeman named Curtis is sent out to Las Vegas (to stay at the Venetian) by an ex-military friend to find Stanley Glass, an old gambling friend of his father's, who supposedly has a gambling debt coming due.

In 1958, a 15 year old juvenile delinquent calling himself Stanley Glass hitch hikes and bums his way from Brooklyn, NY to Venice Beach, CA to find the author of a mysterious and poetic book called The Mirror Thief, whose main character is a 16th century alchemist and doctor named Crivano.

In 1592, Vettor Crivano is in Venice, Italy plotting to smuggle glassmakers and mirror makers out of the city to take them to Constantinople to work for the Turks, treason punishable by death. Originally from Cyprus, he was captured in battle by Turks when he was a young man and taken away to become a janissary. He has been sent back on this mission to bring back glassmakers under the pretext of escaping from Constantinople with the remains of a Cypriot war hero who was known to have been skinned alive by the Turks.

The three stories are obviously connected, and it is part of the fun of this book to try to figure out what the connections are and what they mean. Each story is fully fleshed and engaging on its own. I'm still meditating on the sum of the parts, but this was a very enjoyable book.