Hardcover

Rare-book dealer, ex-journalist and quondam CIA courier Jeffrey Dean discovers two Steinbeck first editions he once owned, now for sale at a Los Angeles book fair. Someone has forged Steinbeck's inscription in both of them. Narib Zaki, the dealer who is selling the books, refuses to divulge how he acquired them. Dean investigates, and finds that they have been taken from the collection of millionaire Alfred Craventon. Events soon heat up: Dean narrowly escapes an assassin's bullet, and the files in his bookstore are thoroughly rifled. It all turns out to be part of a Qadaffi attempt to assassinate the President, a plot in which both Zaki and Craventon are involved. Dean is pressed into service by the CIA, in a high-level hunt that will take him to London and will lead back to the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In his third novel (Natalie, Return to Earth), Warga portrays corrupt terrorists who are not outdone by equally canny CIA agents. An interesting love story and a fund of information on the complexities and civilities of book collecting make this a thriller with special appeal to literate readers. Foreign rights: Sterling Lord. November 18