NO QUESTIONS ASKED (1976) is the last of the St. Ives books
Ross Thomas wrote as Oliver Bleeck, I think. Why did he use a
pseudonym for that series, and why that name? I wonder. This
is a pretty good book, with St. Ives being the go-between
when a copy of the first printed edition of Pliny's HISTORIA
NATURALIS (1469) is stolen when the owner gets it back from
the Library of Congress in Washington, where it was being
kept. The first meet with the thieves goes bad and he starts
an investigation.
The bad guy was pretty obvious midway through, and St. Ives
gets a great clue when someone leaves a name written down in
their motel room. How the person got the name is never
explained. It's just manna from heaven that lets St. Ives
wrap things up nicely. That's not fair, and it bugged me.
Nevertheless, it's a solid read.
The Pliny book is real, incidentally, and you can see a page
here:
http://dig.lib.lehigh.edu/projects/exhibits.asp?id=3&num=04&exp=false
A brief search of the web turns up a bookseller with a copy
going for 80,000 euros. In NO QUESTIONS ASKED, it's worth
$500,000, and that's 1976 money. Either Thomas had it wrong,
or the bookseller's offering a great deal, or Pliny's way
down in his Amazon ranking.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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