Everyone in this story loves maps, and you probably will too by the time you're done reading it. Nell Young still can't understand why her father, head of the map division at the New York Public Library, fired her a few years earlier simply for finding a box full of junk maps. Now she learns that her father has died in his office, and there she finds one of those maps. Why was this ordinary 1930s road map not just worth severing his connection with his daughter but also important enough to keep close to him all these years?
Then she learns that someone is willing to pay a large sum of money for this very map. She suspects her father may have been murdered for it after other deaths follow at the library.
The pieces start falling together when Nell tracks down some of her father's college friends, who once called themselves The Cartographers. It was they who found this mysterious map and learned its secret, leading somehow to her mother's death in a fire. Now one member of the group will do anything to get his hands on the lasting remaining copy, the one Nell now possesses.
Shepherd's story soon turns from a realistic thriller into a fantasy thriller, which fortunately relieves her of the responsibility of being logical. Accept the premise, however, and you will likely find the novel great fun.
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