Zero Knowledge

Just when you think you know the answer...you don't. For readers who love the technological intrigue of Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the cerebral puzzles and relentless momentum of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and the sophisticated international suspense of Daniel Silva, award-winning author Arnaud Pascolo delivers a brilliantly constructed mystery in Zero Knowledge-a mystery thriller where discovering who killed the victim may be easier than proving a murder ever took place. The perfect murder doesn't hide the killer. It hides the crime. Luc Starck is about to lose everything. The crypto entrepreneur's company is failing when an anonymous message offers him an impossible lifeline: a solution to his problems, waiting for him in Switzerland's legendary Crypto Valley. He takes the meeting. Minutes later, he collapses and dies. There is no obvious weapon. No clear suspect. No convincing evidence that a crime has even been committed. What initially appears to be a tragic natural death soon becomes something far more disturbing when senior investigator Bernt Berg and his newly promoted daughter, Lisa-Lotte, begin uncovering clues deliberately left behind. But every answer creates another question. Every suspect seems to know only part of the truth. And every new discovery makes Luc Starck's death more difficult to explain. Soon, the investigators realize they may be asking the wrong question entirely. Meanwhile, grieving cryptography expert Duan Ripa is drawn into the mystery when he begins decoding the private key to Luc's cryptocurrency wallet. What he discovers suggests that Luc's death was not an isolated act of violence but one component of an elaborate design-a crime constructed like unbreakable code, with its secrets divided among people who may not even understand the role they are playing. No single point of failure. No one person who knows everything.And perhaps no one who can ever be convicted of murder. Against the sleek, secretive backdrop of Zug, Switzerland-the real-world heart of Crypto Valley-Zero Knowledge combines murder, cryptography, revenge, family conflict, and psychological deception in a fast-moving international thriller built around one chilling possibility: What if you could design the perfect crime by making sure no one involved knew enough to be guilty of it? This Revised Second Edition of Zero Knowledge delivers an even sharper journey into a mystery where appearances deceive, knowledge can be dangerous, and the truth remains hidden behind one final layer of encryption. Think you can solve it? Enter Crypto Valley. Follow the clues. Question everyone. Trust nothing-and discover why readers and award judges have embraced Zero Knowledge. Pick up the Revised Second Edition today and challenge yourself to unravel a murder designed from the beginning to be impossible to prove. "The storyline was fast-moving, and I found myself unable to turn the pages quickly enough, fearful that I would miss something important." -- Alma Boucher for Readers' Favorite for the First Edition "Zero Knowledge is an exciting thriller by Arnaud Pascolo that skillfully weaves together a complicated and high-stakes story involving crime, technology, and personal drama. This book is a masterpiece of modern storytelling." -- Jessica Morgan for The Book Revue for the First Edition