Louise Gerard

(from inner flap, Mcacaulay dustjacket)

When John Lincoln, second son of Lord Dunwarden, set out to recover the emeralds his mother had buried in Russia, he knew he was risking murder at the hands of his brother, Count Nicholas Griezkoff, as well as terrible punishment by an alert government whose very existence depended upon immediate apprehension of its enemies. For the emeralds were now the property of the Soviets, which were so far unaware of their existence. It was up to Vava, as John was known to his intimates and to his readers, to keep the Soviets in ignorance while he worked under the very nose of government officials -- with Nicky and his henchman dogging his heels -- to recover the jewels and get them out of the country. Lord Dunwarden needed them to repay the stockholders of a defunct company. Vava was an adventurer forced to prove his mettle many times over in all seriousness.

This is an absorbing narrative of fast thinking and fast actions. There are tense moments on a round-the-world cruise, when two of Neptune's Poliecement become bloodthirsty, and a Miss Nancy Clifford is surprised. The color green plays an important part in some amateur sleuthing, and Nicky can't stop wondering where he has seen that quaint Phyllis Martin before. Tantalizing suspense and unexpected thrills are laid against a background of tourist routine in a story in which the course of a man's life is altered by a mole on his ankle, and erratic circumstances converge in one of the strangest of courtships.