Books : Mystery & Thrillers : Authors, A-Z : ( H ) : Highland, Frederick

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Books : Mystery & Thrillers : Authors, A-Z : ( H ) : Highland, Frederick

• Night Falls on Damascus: A Novel

  Frederick Highland

  
  A crime of passion brings on a harrowing criminal investigation in a divided land
   
  Set in the exotic and turbulent world of Syria in the 1930s, Night Falls on Damascus tells the story of a French-Syrian police inspector, Nikolai Faroun, caught up in a complex murder investigation of a beautiful and controversial woman from a prominent Damascus family.
   
  Vera Tamiri made enemies for her good works as well as her cosmopolitanism. On one hand was she was a social reformer who had tried to advance the health and welfare of Arab women in a volatile community hemmed in by custom and hostile to social change. However, Vera had a shadowy side: she cultivated a Bohemian pose, gambled recklessly, and was not always wise in her choice of companions---and lovers.
   
  Faroun suspects that she may have fallen victim to a gruesome crime of passion. However, he soon realizes that there is more to this crime than a jealous lover. In a country chafing under foreign rule and divided by sectarian strife, Vera Tamiri made a tempting political target. In a city seething with anger and revolt, Inspector Faroun begins unraveling a conspiracy from Syria’s troubled past, a secret that Vera may have uncovered---at the cost of her life.
   
  As the elements of a sinister and elusive crime bubble to the surface, Faroun must be careful not to bring to light secrets of his own---the real reason for his presence in Damascus and a compromising relationship with the beautiful and willful wife of a well-connected French businessman. All games, in the end, must be played against the dark backdrop of a city that has been the center of Middle Eastern intrigue for millennia, the stony ground where Cain slew Abel, where Saladin once ruled, and where Nikolai Faroun must discover the key to the murder of a courageous woman who dared to disturb the ancient order.
   
  A gripping murder mystery, Night Falls on Damascus richly evokes a time and place where the deadly conflict between modernism and tradition in the Middle East first came into play.

   

  Praise for Ghost Eaters
   
  “A swashbuckling, seafaring novel with mystical overtones.”
  ---Publishers Weekly
  
  ”An exciting, smoothly written naval adventure set in Malaysia during 1875. Touching on the politics of war, the power of superstition, and the fragility of civilization, this is exhilarating escapist fare.”
  ---Booklist
   
  “The book is peopled with rich, enigmatic characters whose pasts are shrouded in mystery and whose motives are close held secrets.”
  ---Jim Nelson, author of the Revolution at Sea series
   
  
  “Glorious shades of Joseph Conrad, but with wry humor! Splendidly written and an intriguing adventure /mystery in the grand old style.”
  
  ---Dewey Lambdin, author of the Alan Lewrie series
  “Unashamedly and convincingly Conradian in its subject matter and scope, and in the raw and elemental language of its telling . . . this is the work of a devoted and accomplished storyteller, and of a gifted writer and craftsman, for whom the completed tale is considerably more than the sum of its parts.”
   ---Robert Edric, author of The Broken Lands
  
   

• Ghost Eater: A Novel

  Frederick Highland

  
  A riveting thriller, Ghost Eater marks the introduction of an intense new voice in
  seafaring adventure.
  
  Moored in a wintry Asian harbor at the turn of the twentieth century, Captain Ulysses Vanders experiences a revelation. A ferryman brings a mysterious gift--a wine at once rare and familiar that brings the sailor back to a moment in Sumatra thirty years before. "I closed my eyes, remembering where I had last tasted this liquor, remembering back across the years, remembering how steady the hand had been that held out the cup to me, and how desperate the circumstances. With a stab, her face rose before me--beautiful, tantalizing, terrible to behold."
  
  This haunting memory leads the sailor back to his first command and a desperate river journey to rescue missionaries along a remote jungle river. Captain of an aging steamboat, Vanders soon finds himself burdened with a set of unexpected, mysterious passengers, each traveling to the mission outpost known as "Light of the World" for reasons of his or her own. The island world Vanders discovers is a ghostly place, darkly lit with the flames of social upheaval, a world of superstition and strife, as age-old ways of life are swept away in the murderous rampage of a tribe gone mad. At the edge of civilization, the young American captain learns not only the challenge of command but the courage to confront his own illusions, beautiful and terrible to behold.
  
  
   

• The Mystery Box

  Frederick Highland

  
  An illustrated collection of twenty tales of suspense, adventure, and history. Bringing together education and entertainment, each story is followed by a well researched discussion on the historical, cultural, or philatelic items in the story. There are also 5 non-fictional essays the author calls Engimas, mysteries of the real world dealing with subjects as diverse as symbols that speak to us from the past nearly unimaginable events in history and, in the case of the stamps in The Philatelic Hall of Shame, the seemingly quixotic process of selecting what goes into the stamp image. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title