The Melbourne Virus

A Scotland Yard detective and an American reporter frantically try to save the Europe of 1937 from a threat as menacing as Hitler in Leslie's ( The Catapult Ultimatum ) engrossing thriller. Chicago Globe correspondent Jason Mettner meets up with Inspector George Webley in a Spanish village blown to bits by Franco's rebel troops. Both need transportation, but Webley is desperate. Assigned the top-secret task of capturing Michael Hunt, an Australian tourist carrying a plague-like germ, Webley knows that every delay invites visiting the Black Death upon the entire continent, and he enlists Mettner's help. The journalist sets off to find Hunt's beautiful female traveling companion. When she flatly denies knowing Hunt, Mettner takes on the not unpleasant job of befriending her as he waits for the subject to turn up. Meanwhile, Webley learns that the supposed tourist's latest victim is a plastic surgeon who refuses to disclose any hint of Hunt's new appearance. Hunt's other casualties include an arms dealer, a smuggler and a mechanic who had modified Hunt's motorcycle. Clearly someone is laying the foundation for a major crime--but who is the perpetrator and what is his plan? Still more plot twists and dramatic irony color the spellbinding resolution. (July)