Philip St. Ives

To recover an African artifact, St. Ives will trade $250,000, or his life. Philip St. Ives is the kind of man who can convince a vice cop and a paroled mobster to sit down to a hand of poker. Once he was a reporter with a daily column, a fat Rolodex, and a reputation for indifference to criminal behavior. Now he is a go-between, a professional mediator between thieves and the people they rip off. For arranging the recovery of a stolen necklace, painting, or child, St. Ives takes ten percent of the ransom. His work takes him across the globe, but more importantly, it pays his alimony.   An African warrior's shield has come to Washington, where a gang of art-minded burglars pluck it from the museum. They demand $250,000 for the return of the priceless artifact, and request that St. Ives make the hand-off. But when he goes to deliver the cash, he finds himself playing a more deadly game than five-card draw.

When his old boss is kidnapped, St. Ives reluctantly agrees to free him. Philip St. Ives loses his first job in journalism as soon as he realizes he hates the man who gave it to him. Chicago Post editor Amfred Killingsworth is a pompous blowhard, and fires his newest reporter for failing to fawn over him. St. Ives goes to New York, where he lands a daily column and the close friendship of an assortment of crooks. Killingsworth goes in a less respectable direction, becoming the US ambassador to Yugoslavia. By the time the ambassador gets himself kidnapped, the only man who can save him is his former cub reporter.   The kidnappers demand the release of a Slavic poet in exchange for the ambassador, and St. Ives goes behind the Iron Curtain to arrange the hand-off. To protect a trove of ugly Washington secrets, he'll have to save the life of a universally disliked man.

A bungled hand-off lands St. Ives in jail on suspicion of murder. It's three in the morning, and Philip St. Ives has come to the all-night Laundromat to meet a thief. His laundry bag isn't carrying dirty clothing; it's stuffed with $90,000 cash. But he finds his contact, Bobby Boykins, in no state to talk. Bobby has been beaten, strangled, and stuffed behind a washing machine; Philip is inspecting the corpse when the police find him. Standing in a Laundromat with a dead body and a sack full of cash, Philip learns, is a good way to get arrested.   St. Ives is a go-between, a mediator between thieves and their victims, and he came to meet Bobby for the sake of a rich man who has lost his diary. If Philip can escape the Tenth Precinct, Bobby's killer will come for him next.

St. Ives goes to London on a job for the least trustworthy con artist he knows. Philip St. Ives has only been in the pub a few minutes before he realizes his whiskey is drugged. Instantly sick, he's vomiting on the sidewalk when the muggers appear. He fights as best he can in his drugged state, and only when he feels the handcuffs does he realize his assailants aren't muggers, they're cops.   He wakes in a dingy cell to the knowledge that English Eddie Apex has pulled a fast one on him. English Eddie is not English, but talks with a British accent that once made him New York's most refined con artist. In retirement and living in London, he had hired St. Ives, a professional mediator between crooks and their marks, to come to England to help him recover a stolen painting. The drugged whiskey won't be the last surprise St. Ives gets in Blighty, and the police won't be the only ones who try to cause him pain.

With eviction looming, St. Ives searches for a big payday and a rare book. 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.