The Twelfth Tablet

A single sheet of ancient gold promises immortality—and leaves a trail of murder across Zurich.

Twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife. Each has taken its own journey, and each has its own story to tell. This is one of those stories.

Tom Harper opens the account in Zurich, where an overdue doctoral student helps an imposing stranger inspect a classical bronze. The narrative tracks a single fragile leaf of gold from antiquity, and the author follows the trail of blood it leaves across modern Switzerland.

A lakeside mansion becomes the setting for murder, and the plot turns a quiet museum errand into a desperate flight. Harper strands his scholar between ruthless buyers and the police, following the golden leaf onto a train bound for the border.

The Twelfth Tablet is a short story that includes a sneak peek of The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper.

• Historical Mystery: An Orphic funerary tablet inscribed with ancient verse for the dead becomes the target of an obsessive international collector.
• Ancient Mythology: A fourth-century BC bronze recovered from an ancient shipwreck draws a scholar into the ruthless trade in stolen antiquities.
• Race Against Time: A terrified academic must negotiate Zurich Hauptbahnhof with a fragile gold leaf rolled inside an ordinary fountain pen.
• Also by This Author: Zodiac Station and The Orpheus Descent.