|
|
Paul Murray
|
BIO
|
|
|
After his graduation from Swarthmore, PAUL MURRAY served with General Mark Clark’s Fifth Army Headquarters. During the war he spent two years in Italy, and learned to love that country almost as much as his own. At the end of the ware he was stationed in Vienna for several months, and it was from that experience that he wrote his first novel, after his discharge in 1946. Mr. Murray worked for Pan Am for eighteen months, visiting London thirty-four times within that period. His knowledge of the two countries stood him in good stead to write THE FREE AGENT. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Set in Florence
(Toscana)
London
|
|
|
|
©1952
|
Out of Print
|
|
The Free Agent
JACKET NOTES: Gordon Teague, an American travel writer, is en route from Sicily to Florence when on the rapido north from Rome he meets an old friend, Eve Wyndham, and her young son, Matthew.
In Florence Eve is murdered and the police question Teague, then ask that he take Matthew to his Aunt Julia in London. Teague agrees reluctantly--for two reasons. He has come to Florence to be with Francesca, whom he knew in Sicily, and he resents this intrusion in his plans. More seriously, he has been Julia's lover and is apprehensive at the prospect of renewing their acquaintance under doubly difficult circumstances.
After promising in help Italian inspector Danielli while in London, Teague takes Matthew to England and Julia.
There he and Julia meet and become actively involved in the investigations English and Italian--concerning Eve's death. After the first embarrassment of their reunion, their love for one another is revived, but with more sincerity and deeper meaning to both of them.
The chase for Eve's murderers covers Cairo, Naples, Florence, and London.
Acting as Danielli's lieutenant, league aids Inspector Cleminshaw in unraveling the complete skein shrouding the mystery of Eve's conspiracy a with a gang of arms smugglers supplying ammunition to both sides in the Jewish-Arab conflict.
In London, where most of the action is centered, Julia’s and Teague’s counterplot is set against the bohemian world of the theater, for which Julia is a set designer. It is in this group that we meet the amusing revue artist, Minerva Tempest, and her friends. Moving always in the background is the silent, malevolent figure of Victor Bornemann, theatrical “angel” and vital force in the complications surrounding Eve’s murder.
(© Henry Holt and Company, Inc.)
|
|
|
