THE THIRD WAY

Probe magazine writer Sarah Calloway (The White Hand, 1988) is now in Paris to bid on the Isabel Eberhardt journals--except that they've been withdrawn from the auction. Mohammed Ali Kahil Assam, also present, casually introduces himself to Sarah and tells her he has contacts for getting the journals. The next day he's dead--poisoned--and the Paris police have confiscated Sarah's passport, as well as startled her with photographs of her fiancÉ, free-lance journalist Stanley London, taken with Assam in Tunis over two years ago. Then Stanley is kidnapped from Orly Airport; more pictures emerge--of Stanley in bed with a pretty, young alleged terrorist; and Assam's contact, bookseller Eli Schutzman, admits that the girl is his granddaughter, Greta, a fervent believer in Israeli/Palestinian peace talks, and that she's married to Assam. Then the complications really begin. Through it all, Sarah is barely one step ahead of the Mossad, the CIA, the PLO, and the Paris Prefecture, and is thoroughly mired in Middle East politics before a shaky resolution sets things to right--sort of. An earnest, simply written tale of contemporary intrigue and allegiances.