John Crosby, who has been called America s

Graham Greene and whose following grows

every year, has delivered his breakthrough novel,

a captivating story of sophisticated suspense that

features two of the most delightful characters to

appear in print in many a year.

Horatio Cassidy, a beguilingly uninhibited

professor of medieval literature and one-time CIA

factotum, is hired by the ageless and beautiful

Principessa di Castiglione to both tutor and pro-

tect her twelve-year-old daughter Lucia. Very

soon Cassidy discovers two things: that he has

developed an uncommon affection for his pre-

cocious charge and that her life is threatened on

every side by people who have resolved not only

to kidnap and possibly kill the child, but have

every means in the world of doing so.

The story takes place in Windletop,a fifty-

five-story highrise of black glass and steel on

Manhattan s elegant East Side, a luxtury dwelling

whose security apparatus, with twentieth-century

embellishments, would rival the most impreg-

nable European fortress of the Middle Ages.