Showing results for "Rare Earth" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

A washed up T.V. reporter stumbles onto a corruption scandal in Western China. Pursued through the desert by a psychotic spin-doctor and a world-weary cop, he discovers the real China: illegal metal mines, a fashion-crazed gang of girl bikers, a whole commune of Tiananmen Square survivors and the up-market sleaze-joints of Beijing. En route, he clashes with a stellar cast of people - traffickers, prostitutes and T.V. execs. But then the unquiet dead begin to intervene: ghosts from his own past and the past of Chinese Communism; the "spirits that hover three feet above our heads" of Chinese folklore.

Supposedly, dispatched to audit a relief organization’s accounts, Marc Royce finds himself amid the squalor and chaos of Kenyan refugee camps caught in a stranglehold of corruption and ruthlessness. But his true task relates to the area’s reserves of once-obscure metals now indispensible to high-tech industry. The value of this rare earth inflames tensions on the world’s stage as well as among warring tribes.

Panic strikes at the highest levels of the French government when the former president is found hanging from the rafters in his home right after a terrorist attack at the airport. Is it suicide or assassination? Freelance operative John Spencer Larivière, his karate-trained partner, Victoire, and their computer-genius sidekick, Luc, must find out what he was hiding. Quickly the investigation turns into a globe-spanning confrontation in a world of high-frequency trading where manipulation and corruption reign.