Bøger af Gary R. Lowell

A sinister 15th century black slate castle in north-central Portugal, overpopulated with insidious, all-knowing crows, is the setting for a mysterious inscription on a leper priest's gravestone. It reads: Fr. Joaquim, SJ, 32312 This dismal, dark edifice formerly served as a leprosarium for afflicted monks, now long dead, who pursued the practice of mining local ores during the WWII period. A Texas geologist and a French Jesuit priest are drawn into these ancient, crumbling ruins and unexpectedly encounter a mysterious, elderly black Mozambican priest on a mission of his own. The combined efforts of this unlikely triad decode the cryptic message from the grave and the trio is compelled to investigate an ancient Roman mine beyond the black castle walls. When the geologist descends into the hellish, forbidding depths of a near-vertical mine shaft, he makes a shocking discovery that cries out for justice.

This story is set in Fundão, Portugal, gateway to Europe's most productive tungsten mine. It is a story of an innocent girl thrust into prostitution amidst the intrigues of British and German spy rings infesting neutral Portugal during the early 1940's. This was a dark and turbulent period in which tiny, defenseless Portugal cowered beneath the ominous shadows of occupation by Nazi Germany and even Franco's fascist Spain. Beneath the veneer of humor, sex and murder in this story, lies the stark reality that Germany could not achieve its goal of European domination without the iron and tungsten of neutral Sweden and Portugal. These necessary wartime commodities were purchased with gold looted from Europe's central banks by the ever resourceful Nazis. After the fall of France in 1940, only the grit and determination of the British spies stood in opposition to Hitler's insidious and evil visions for Portugal.