My second Ross Thomas, the first I bought (in Cork city, Bridge Street Books as it was then, don't care what they changed it to, it's always Bridge Street Books to me, even if it was only called that for about a week.) My copy vanished, but I have now acquired a replacement, and it was so long ago and I was so callow and ignorant of the world that it's like reading a Ross Thomas book for the first time all over again! Yay for the callowness of youth!

The usual whipsmart plot sees a terrorist nabbed in London, leading to a counter-nabbing of the US president's brother by Libyans who were funding the terrorist and who think the original nabbers were the CIA. Except they weren't and nobody knows who has the terrorist. A quintessential shady Ross Thomas political fixer is summoned and a quintessential shady Ross Thomas troubleshooter - Chubb Dunjee, ex-congressman and so-called Mordida Man for his renown in getting people out of jams in Mexico - is enjoined to shoot the trouble. While he slides obliquely from London to Rome chasing connections and making plays the CIA, the terrorists holding the president's brother, a diplomat, a UN official, the Libyans and the actual original nabbers work their schemes and their plans and their plots. It's at once insanely complicated and smooth as a blade, like a good whiskey. Funny and dark and twisty and and sly and cruel. Quintessential Ross Thomas.