Flight of the Hornbill: The Third Ray Sharp Novel

Eric Stone, Author . Bleak House $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-60648-021-2 ISBN 978-1-60648-022-9

At the start of Stone’s fine third thriller to feature PI Ray Sharp (after Grave Imports ), Ray has just arrived in Jakarta from Hong Kong, his current home, to check the legitimacy of a deal between an oil and gas company, Motex, and an Australian mining outfit, Lucky Break, that’s claiming a major gold discovery in Sumatra. Then Ray’s estranged wife, Sylvia, turns up and offers him a deal: if he’ll find her missing boyfriend, she’ll give him a trouble-free divorce. Loyal, tough, funny and catnip to the ladies, Ray ping-pongs between his Russian prostitute lover, Irina, and a number of Indonesian lovelies, most of whom are bar girls, smalltime thieves or working some sort of con in an attempt to rise above the grinding local poverty, as he searches for answers. Inspired by the real-life Bre-X gold fraud of 1997, this entry is particularly notable for its steamy Indonesian setting. (Oct.)

Reviewed on: 08/11/2008

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Paperback - 245 pages - 978-1-60648-022-9 - 978-1-60648-022-9