Nina Wilde and Eddie Chase are back in another epic contemporary adventure thriller. As the story opens Michelangelo's David is stolen from its plinth in Florence, Italy, in the latest of a series of audacious raids of the world's greatest treasures. When another treasure, the Talonor Codex - an account of the travels of a great Atlantean explorer, which suggests a link between the ancient Hindu civilisation of India and the Atlanteans - is stolen from an exhibition in San Francisco, Nina and Eddie join the adventure.
Dismas Hardy is an ex-cop and bartender at the Little Shamrock, owned by his friend Moses McGuire. When Moses asks him to investigate the alleged suicide of his brother-in-law, Eddie Cochran, Dismas obliges. Though Dismas's probing suggests that Eddie was involved in a drug deal, he begins to uncover a dangerous entanglement much closer to home.
Possessed of a singular writer's instinct, Lescroart drapes a bare-bones plot in psychological window dressing and produces a full-bodied, substantive, and stylistic effort of the first order. San Francisco ex-cop and current bartender Dismas "Diz" Hardy cannot believe his friend Eddie would commit suicide, so he decides to investigate. The progress of his search into Eddie's last days coincides with changes in his own emotional make-up, as he faces the reasons for his divorce and his feelings of guilt over the death of his infant son. Full attention to character, then, a sympathetic protagonist, and a satisfying conclusion.
Eddie is constantly being outdone by his classmate Courtney who demonstrates that she is far braver than he is. Eddie plays a series of practical jokes on Courtney that all backfire and serve to further demonstrate her superior bravery. In his final effort to scare Courtney, Eddie and his friends dress up like mud monsters, but before they can sneak up on Courtney, real mud monsters sneak up on them and scare them away.
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Secondary Phase
A reissue of the second series of BBC Radio 4's humorous science-fiction drama, featuring such characters as Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Trillian, Eddie the Ship's Computer, and Slartibartfast.
