No Questions Asked

Ross Thomas

Jul 2012 · The Philip St. Ives Mysteries Book 5 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

A rare book disappears—and so does the detective who was guarding it—in a novel by an author who is “without peer in American suspense” (Los Angeles Times).

Philip St. Ives has no love for New York’s drafty, broken-down Adelphi Hotel, but he is in no mood to be evicted from it. His cash dwindling, he is happy to learn about a job that calls for his specific talents as a mediator between thieves and their victims. It sounds like the set-up to a bad joke: A thief, an insurance salesman, and the Library of Congress call Philip’s lawyer to ask about a stolen copy of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis. To find it, Philip will risk becoming history himself. The book was stolen on its way from the Library of Congress to California, and the detective guarding it vanished as well. Mired in snow-choked Washington, DC, St. Ives must arrange for a pair of ransoms to avoid becoming a victim of book collectors who value a nice first edition over an investigator’s life.

About the author

DIVThe winner of the inaugural Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award, Ross Thomas (1926–1995) was a prolific author whose political thrillers drew praise for being witty as well as suspenseful. Born in Oklahoma City, Thomas grew up during the Great Depression, and served in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, he worked as a foreign correspondent, public relations official, and political strategist before publishing his first novel, The Cold War Swap (1967), based on his experience working in Bonn, Germany. The novel was a hit, winning Thomas an Edgar Award for Best First Novel and establishing the characters Mac McCorkle and Mike Padillo./divDIV /divHe followed it up with three more novels about McCorkle and Padillo, finishing the series in 1990. He wrote nearly a book a year for twenty-five years, occasionally under the pen name Oliver Bleeck, and won the Edgar Award for Best Novel with Briarpatch (1984). Thomas died of lung cancer in California, a year after publishing his final novel, Ah, Treachery!