Nightingale

Fülszöveg

The biggest jewel robbery in history is about to take place in the capital of oil-rich Iran. The prize is the Iranian crown jewels, the multibillion-dollar hoard accumulated by generations of shahs, which includes onethird of the largest known cut diamonds in existence, as well as thousands of rubies, emeralds and pearls. The setting for this unusual növel of intrigue is Teherán, and alsó the fabled ruins of Persepolis, one of the world's greatest archaeological sites. Oil wealth has attracted a vast number of foreign adventurers to the city-among them, Harry Arloff, an American of uncertain past and indefinite future, who is currently a jewelry salesman plying his trade among the very rich and managing to stay reasonably honest. Another is Gail Olsen, an American party girl who has tarried for too long in the fleshpots of the Middle East. A third is Colonel Kates. a renegade U.S. Army officer who is preparing the robbery with Pentagon-style precision, leaving nothing to chance, and... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The biggest jewel robbery in history is about to take place in the capital of oil-rich Iran. The prize is the Iranian crown jewels, the multibillion-dollar hoard accumulated by generations of shahs, which includes onethird of the largest known cut diamonds in existence, as well as thousands of rubies, emeralds and pearls. The setting for this unusual növel of intrigue is Teherán, and alsó the fabled ruins of Persepolis, one of the world's greatest archaeological sites. Oil wealth has attracted a vast number of foreign adventurers to the city-among them, Harry Arloff, an American of uncertain past and indefinite future, who is currently a jewelry salesman plying his trade among the very rich and managing to stay reasonably honest. Another is Gail Olsen, an American party girl who has tarried for too long in the fleshpots of the Middle East. A third is Colonel Kates. a renegade U.S. Army officer who is preparing the robbery with Pentagon-style precision, leaving nothing to chance, and whose motley task force of brigands, political terrorists and technical specialists is inappropriatelv called Nightingale. the favorité songbird of Iranian poets. Caught in Kates' web by blackmail and kidnapping, Harry and Gail struggle unavailingly to extricate themselves as the da> of the robbery draws near The heist of the jewels is a complete success: it is only dur ing the aftermath. which takes place in
(continued from front flap) Persepolis itself, that the colonel's plans begin to go awry. On this bizarre stage Harry and Gail find themselves leading actors in an international crisis that pits Washington against Moscow, and raises the specter of war. Once again Eric Pace has created a superb növel of suspense, peopled with vivid and believable charaeters against an exotic background that is eurrently in the world's headlines. Eric Pace, a native New Yörker and a graduate of Exeter and Yale, is a veterán reporter and foreign correspondent for The j New York Times. Over the years he has j been based in Teherán, Beirut, Cairo, Paris, Saigon, Bonn and New York, where he now makes his home. The journalistic prizes he has won include the George Polk Award of the Overseas Press Club of America for "exceptional courage" in his reporting from Cairo during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. He is married to Suzanne Wiedel-Pace, a maga- ; zine editor. This is his third növel. Vissza