Agent Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media set some sort of a speed record recently with a book he sold to an American publisher just as he was leaving for the Frankfurt fair. He had made a verbal agreement to sell world English rights to Bill Shinker at his Gotham imprint at Penguin Putnam in a book to be called The Arms of Angels by Michael Capuzzo (whose last book was the well-received Close to Shore, about a 1916 shark attack in New Jersey). The new book is a true tale about a mysterious group of skilled detectives who use their skills to solve only the most despicable of crimes, led by a figure who seems to be a contemporary Sherlock Holmes. Shinker laid out $800,000 for it, and as soon as Gottlieb arrived in Frankfurt, he had a pair of British publishers bidding against each other to help defray Shinker's investment; the winner was Pearson's Tom Weldon, buying for Penguin U.K., with a bid worth $300,000. Shinker raised no objection.