Murder at the Library of Congress

Zusatztext “A first-rate mystery writer.” – Los Angles Time Book Review “TRUMAN CAN WRITE SUSPENSE WITH THE BEST OF THEM.” –LARRY KING Informationen zum Autor Margaret Truman has won faithful readers with her works of biography and fiction, particularly her ongoing series of Capital Crimes mysteries. Her novels let us into the corridors of power and privilege, poverty and pageantry in the nation’s capital. She lives in Manhattan. Klappentext In the depths of the U.S. Library of Congress toil thousands of researchers, chasing down obsessions, breakthroughs, and new contributions to human wisdom. But when amateur D.C. sleuth Annabel Reed-Smith enters this stately American institution, she discovers a hornet's nest of intrigue and murder. After a renowned scholar is bludgeoned to death among the scholarly stacks, an ambitious TV reporter links the case to the heist of a Spanish painting from a Miami museum and a killing in Mexico City. Annabel suspects that buried in the Library are secrets some people will do anything to keep silent-the secret of a rich man's ambition, a researcher's disappearance, and a mysterious diary of Christopher Columbus's journey written five hundred years ago. . . . Esteban Reina looked down from the tall stepladder. Above him was the skylight he’d just repaired. He’d explained to his boss, the museum’s manager, that the repair he’d started that morning was more complicated than he’d anticipated, and that he would have to remove the entire skylight to do the job right. “Before it rains,” the manager said. “Make sure it’s fixed before it rains.” Reina had taken his time, but kept an eye on the sky. Rain wasn’t forecast until the night, plenty of time. It was now five o’clock. The skylight had been removed, the weather stripping replaced, and the skylight again rested in its opening, allowing gray light to filter into the small, single gallery of Casa de Seville, a not-for-profit museum of sorts supported by a grant from two Hispanic-American businessmen and donations at the door. Devoted to bringing a taste of Seville, Spain, to Miami, it was located on Southwest Eighth Street—“Little Havana.” The collection wasn’t especially important in a historical sense, nor was the worth of the displays, maps, dioramas of fifteenth-century Seville, and costumes replicating what was then fashionable very high. If worth was determined by size, a large painting by an obscure, modestly capable nineteenth-century artist, Fernando Reyes (influenced by the respected seventeenth-century religious painter, Murillo), was the most valuable offering in the small space. The scene was Columbus on his knees in Seville offering up his Book of Privileges to King Fernando and Queen Isabel. It was but one of myriad paintings done over the centuries depicting that event; Reyes’s work was considered by collectors to be barely adequate; he was perhaps not influenced enough by Murillo. Reina, Casa de Seville’s part-time maintenance man, went to a rear door, opened it, and placed the ladder outside. He then went to the men’s room, where he washed his hands, changed out of work clothes into slacks, a floral shirt, and sandals, and left the museum, pausing to say good night to the manager. “Fixed good as new,” Reina said. “And before the rain.” “Excellent. See you in the morning, Esteban.” “Sí, mañana por la mañana.” Warren Munsch assiduously avoided Miami’s fancier Chinese restaurants in favor of the one he sat in this night, a small storefront take-out place with four tables, in a strip mall near the airport. He wasn’t particularly concerned with the quality of the food on his plate, as long as it wasn’t foul. Warren Munsch ate to satisfy hunger, to fill the void three times a day. That’s how he approached most aspects of his life. The ribs and fried dumplings rested heavily in his di...

Product details

• Authors: Margaret Truman
• Publisher: Fawcett Book Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.10.2001
• EAN: 9780449001950
• ISBN: 978-0-449-00195-0
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 106 mm x 175 mm x 20 mm
• Series: Capital Crimes; Capital Crimes (Paperback); Capital Crimes
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense