American agents abduct a high-profile terrorist in broad daylight on the streets of London, subduing him with a tranquilizer. He dies a few hours later on a flight back to Washington, DC, and the body is dropped into the ocean. Hours later, the President's brother- a political powerhouse in his own right- boards a plane to Las Vegas that doesn't land in Nevada. Libyan radicals are at the controls, and he is their prisoner.
The only man who can save him is Chubb Dunjee. A former United Nations operative with skills in every aspect of political negotiation, Chubb became famous for solving problems with well-placed bribes. Saving the President's brother should be no trouble for him. But the Libyans don't want a bribe. They want blood.
Nicolae Polscaru, a three-and-a-half-foot-tall dwarf, is tossed into a Hollywood swimming pool by four drunken screenwriters, who take bets on how long he can tread water. Minor Jackson, his OSS training still fresh a year after World War II's end, beats the bullies senseless and pulls Nicolae from the water. A friendship is born.
Jackson is broke, his spying days over, and Nicolae offers him a job. A former spy himself, the globe-trotting Romanian has a commission to find Kurt Oppenheimer, an expert assassin of high-ranking Nazis. Kurt won't stop killing, no matter what the bloodshed will do to the fragile world peace, and the Soviets, the British, and the remains of the Nazi High Command all want his head. Jackson will beat them all to finding Kurt-unless his new friend betrays him first.
A large sum of money brings former campaign manager and Washington insider Harvey Longmire out of retirement and on the trail of a missing union leader, a trail that leads through the seamy side of the capital's political scene.
Born to a steelworker but harboring theatrical aspirations, Donald Cubbin grew up tempted by two careers. A Hollywood scout finally notices him, but Cubbin has already taken a job with the local union boss. He’s always regretted that decision—especially now.
After decades climbing the ranks, Cubbin runs the show as the union’s president. An election looms, and his opponent proves to be a dangerously loose cannon. Cubbin has made dozens of enemies over the years, and one has just engaged a hired killer. The fight for Cubbin’s job starts with muckraking but could end in murder.
“Ross Thomas is without peer in American suspense.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“What Elmore Leonard does for crime in the streets, Ross Thomas does for crime in the suites.”
—The Village Voice
Saloon owner Mac McCorkle and former CIA agent Mike Padillo team up to help a pair of bodyguards being pursued by assassins, who soon add McCorkle and Padillo to their hit list.
As the saying goes, you can't pick your friends. If you could, Mac McCorkle would disown Padilla. They owned a bar together in Bonn, the West German capital, and stayed partners even after Padilla's sideline as a CIA operative got the bar blown up. Padilla was thought to be dead and erased from the CIA's files, but now he's back on the agency's turf.
Mac moved to Washington, D.C., after the trouble in Bonn to get married and open his bar anew. His new bride is beautiful, the bar is a success, and Padilla's reappearance threatens everything. A group of African terrorists want Padilla to assassinate the prime minister of their small sub-Saharan republic, and they've kidnapped Mac's wife to use as leverage.
Two pirates do battle on an old junk ship in Singapore Harbor. They leap nimbly from deck to rigging, crossing swords like fencing masters. And then one surprises the other, slicing a rope and sending the unfortunate pirate tumbling into the bay. This is how stuntman Angelo Sacchetti dies.
Edward Cauthorne was his opponent, a fellow stuntman whose career died along with Sacchetti. He's selling used cars when two thugs approach him. They're emissaries from Sacchetti's godfather, a Mafia don. Sacchetti is alive after all-alive enough to be blackmailing the don-and they firmly request that Cauthorne find him. The search takes Cauthorne back to Singapore, to risk his own life for the sake of the man he thought he'd killed.
Clinton Shartelle doesn't seem like a good choice to run a political campaign in Albertia. For one thing, he's American, and Albertia is a small coastal republic in Africa, about to be cut loose from the English Crown. For another, Shartelle is Southern and fiercely proud of it, and his ideas about racial politics veer unpredictably from progressive to rigidly old-fashioned. But Shartelle is the best, and the political future of Albertia is too important to be left to anyone else.
If history is any indication, this first fair election will probably be the country's last. Rich natural resources make it attractive to businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, opening Albertia up to political corruption. For his part, Shartelle is hired to make sure that a British industrialist's favored candidate wins the presidency. But the opposition is backed by the CIA, for whom murder is just another political tool.
