The Black Madonna

A book to make Dan Brown turn green with envy. In the ruins on the outskirts of Gaza a young female archeologist has made a remarkable find: possibly the earliest known image of the Virgin Mary, created during her lifetime. But before she can reveal it to the world it is stolen amidst the chaos of an Israeli air strike. With her former lover, an Oxford professor, she sets out on a quest to discover who has stolen the image and why, encountering mystery, murder, myth and geopolitics and beginning to unearth a conspiracy that dates to the final pagan Roman emperor. "Look out Dan Brown, make way for Millar"--Jeffery Deaver

Peter Millar was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he read French and Russian. He subsequently joined Reuters and was posted to Brussels, before beginning a life-long love affair with Berlin as the only non-German western correspondent in East Berlin. In 1985 he joined the Telegraph group and in 1989 the Sunday Times as Central Europe correspondent. He was named Foreign Correspondent of the Year for his coverage of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Peter Millar is also the author of three thrillers in English as well as a travel book, All Gone to Look for America, and the newly released, 1989: The Berlin Wall: My Part in Its Downfall. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.