P.I. Bertrand McAbee, former classics professor, has a knack for finding trouble in unlikely places. Baden College in Iowa is a pretty famous center of higher education. But a problem haunts the campus, a string of disappearances over many years. McAbee is hired as a substitute classics professor and has one semester to find out whether or not the disappearances are sinister in nature. What he finds will bring him to the brink of death.

Former classics professor, Bertrand McAbee - an ambivalent P.I., is asked to investigate a fatal car crash in Ohio. The victim was a former professorial colleague of his. McAbee's involvement in this apparently simple investigation will find him ensconced in an extraordinary set of events that began just prior to World War I. A toy - the pony circus wagon - is embedded with a fortune in jewels along with a story and provenance of incredible dimensions. The toy is something to kill for and that's exactly what has been happening.

P.I. Bertrand McAbee never thought he'd see another harness race track after a near-death experience in Cassies Ruler. This former classics prof is hired to look into the beating and threatening of a harness horse trainer. As he engages with the case the story of a pacer - Phantom Express - emerges that begins to capture the attention of America. It also brings back some bad memories to some vicious people. In what occurs too often for McAbee's taste, a simple case caroms into a complex case where death and mayhem lurk.

Toward the middle of the twelfth century King Roger II, the Norman occupier of southern Italy and Sicily, desired to have an accurate map of the world. The scholars most known in the field of geography were Moslems, some of whom were famed for the personal travels they undertook. One of these men, Mohammed al-Idrisi, was sought out by Roger for his extraordinary knowledge of the known world. Near the end of his life, Roger was presented with an atlas of pure silver weighing over 400 pounds. By all accounts it was a masterpiece of artistry and, for the age, scholarly sophistication. It was al-Idrisi's jewel. However, in the chaos that was Sicily's heritage, it was long thought the silver atlas had been melted down by one group or another, a heartbreakingly lost object of beauty and scholarship. Iowa PI Bertrand McAbee is approached by a woman of a certain age to investigate the savage beating of a Tunisian doctoral student from the University of Iowa. McAbee, a former classics professor, takes on the matter against his intuition. As in so many of his cases it is not long before it morphs into a hugely complicated puzzle. Those pieces are made of murder, duplicity, and theft - all to the purpose of forwarding the agenda of an aristocratic world of secrecy where hoarding of cultural artifacts is commonplace. McAbee will enlist the assistance of his agency's best people as he comes to realize that a trip to Sicily will be necessary. There, with the assistance of a Benedictine abbot, McAbee will begin to understand the extraordinary danger that haunts one of his most perplexing cases.

In 1453 the collapse of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity's most sacred City, Constantinople, radiated shocks through the entirety of the Christian world. Symbolically, the Islamic Ottoman Turks had made Santa Sophia, the most famous Christian church in the world, into a mosque. Any doubts that there was a now an Ottoman Empire poised to conquer the Christian West were dispelled. But the history around the collapse itself was surrounded with loose ends and oddities. This novel fastens on one of these pieces. When Constantinople fell there was a huge amount of slaughter and pillage by the Ottomans. There are some doubts about what happened to the Christian Emperor, Constantius. It is said that he was killed in battle but some accounts suggest otherwise. During much of World War II Nazis occupied Greece. The Greeks put up a torrid resistance to this occupation. On the island of Lesbos two resistance fighters came onto a cache of objects that could turn history on its head. But the cache is re-buried until at last the two fighters, now in their eighties, must face the question of whether to reveal their find. Bertrand McAbee is a PI residing in the heart of the Mississippi Valley in Davenport, Iowa. A former college professor of classics, he has been in the PI business for ten years. He has a knack for getting involved in situations that mushroom into particularly difficult and dangerous cases. At the deathbed request of one of these Greek resistance fighters, McAbee is asked to go to Mt. Athos in Greece, the monastic center of the Orthodox Church, and speak with the other resistance fighter about the cache found years back in Lesbos. After he consents to do so he will encounter an extraordinary set of deadly obstacles as he confronts a historical dilemma.

P.I. Bertrand McAbee, a former classics professor, has a knack for finding dangerous cases. This time a misanthrope, with a satirical sense of humor, is discovered hanging under an Interstate 55 overpass. Suspects seem to be almost infinite and the Chicago P.D. disengages. As McAbee enters this labyrinthine affair, he begins to see that an extraordinary cast of groups with notoriously short tempers might have taken aim at this victim. With the assistance of his team and the play of events his focus turns to the one group he didn't want to encounter.

Toward the middle of the twelfth century King Roger II, the Norman occupier of southern Italy and Sicily, desired to have an accurate map of the world. The scholars most known in the field of geography were Moslems, some of whom were famed for the personal travels they undertook. One of these men, Mohammed al-Idrisi, was sought out by Roger for his extraordinary knowledge of the known world. Near the end of his life, Roger was presented with an atlas of pure silver weighing over 400 pounds. By all accounts it was a masterpiece of artistry and, for the age, scholarly sophistication. It was al-Idrisi's jewel. However, in the chaos that was Sicily's heritage, it was long thought the silver atlas had been melted down by one group or another, a heartbreakingly lost object of beauty and scholarship. Iowa PI Bertrand McAbee is approached by a woman of a certain age to investigate the savage beating of a Tunisian doctoral student from the University of Iowa. McAbee, a former classics professor, takes on the matter against his intuition. As in so many of his cases it is not long before it morphs into a hugely complicated puzzle. Those pieces are made of murder, duplicity, and theft - all to the purpose of forwarding the agenda of an aristocratic world of secrecy where hoarding of cultural artifacts is commonplace. McAbee will enlist the assistance of his agency's best people as he comes to realize that a trip to Sicily will be necessary. There, with the assistance of a Benedictine abbot, McAbee will begin to understand the extraordinary danger that haunts one of his most perplexing cases.

In 1453 the collapse of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity's most sacred City, Constantinople, radiated shocks through the entirety of the Christian world. Symbolically, the Islamic Ottoman Turks had made Santa Sophia, the most famous Christian church in the world, into a mosque. Any doubts that there was a now an Ottoman Empire poised to conquer the Christian West were dispelled. But the history around the collapse itself was surrounded with loose ends and oddities. This novel fastens on one of these pieces. When Constantinople fell there was a huge amount of slaughter and pillage by the Ottomans. There are some doubts about what happened to the Christian Emperor, Constantius. It is said that he was killed in battle but some accounts suggest otherwise. During much of World War II Nazis occupied Greece. The Greeks put up a torrid resistance to this occupation. On the island of Lesbos two resistance fighters came onto a cache of objects that could turn history on its head. But the cache is re-buried until at last the two fighters, now in their eighties, must face the question of whether to reveal their find. Bertrand McAbee is a PI residing in the heart of the Mississippi Valley in Davenport, Iowa. A former college professor of classics, he has been in the PI business for ten years. He has a knack for getting involved in situations that mushroom into particularly difficult and dangerous cases. At the deathbed request of one of these Greek resistance fighters, McAbee is asked to go to Mt. Athos in Greece, the monastic center of the Orthodox Church, and speak with the other resistance fighter about the cache found years back in Lesbos. After he consents to do so he will encounter an extraordinary set of deadly obstacles as he confronts a historical dilemma.

P.I. Bertrand McAbee, a former classics professor, has a knack for finding dangerous cases. This time a misanthrope, with a satirical sense of humor, is discovered hanging under an Interstate 55 overpass. Suspects seem to be almost infinite and the Chicago P.D. disengages. As McAbee enters this labyrinthine affair, he begins to see that an extraordinary cast of groups with notoriously short tempers might have taken aim at this victim. With the assistance of his team and the play of events his focus turns to the one group he didn't want to encounter.

P.I. Bertrand McAbee, former classics professor, has a knack for finding trouble in unlikely places. Baden College in Iowa is a pretty famous center of higher education. But a problem haunts the campus, a string of disappearances over many years. McAbee is hired as a substitute classics professor and has one semester to find out whether or not the disappearances are sinister in nature. What he finds will bring him to the brink of death.

Former classics professor, Bertrand McAbee - an ambivalent P.I., is asked to investigate a fatal car crash in Ohio. The victim was a former professorial colleague of his. McAbee's involvement in this apparently simple investigation will find him ensconced in an extraordinary set of events that began just prior to World War I. A toy - the pony circus wagon - is embedded with a fortune in jewels along with a story and provenance of incredible dimensions. The toy is something to kill for and that's exactly what has been happening.

P.I. Bertrand McAbee never thought he'd see another harness race track after a near-death experience in Cassies Ruler. This former classics prof is hired to look into the beating and threatening of a harness horse trainer. As he engages with the case the story of a pacer - Phantom Express - emerges that begins to capture the attention of America. It also brings back some bad memories to some vicious people. In what occurs too often for McAbee's taste, a simple case caroms into a complex case where death and mayhem lurk.