Word: usher
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...Ambrose Usher sniffs and swirls a mystery as he would a vintage claret from the cellars of his Oxford college. A philosophy don vivant who is summoned from time to time to put down wickedness on behalf of Her Majesty's government, he is the most erudite amateur detective in current fiction...
...Treasury Alarm, Jocelyn Davey's fifth Usher novel, Ambrose is in the exotic city of Boston to deliver a series of lectures at nearby Harvard. The Treasury-"the innerest of inner circles" -asks him to look over an improper Bostonian named George Fletcher, who is busily gobbling up key British companies, possibly for the Soviets. Usher had known and much disliked the conglomerator in his days as an economic attache to the British embassy in Washington (A Capitol Offense). He had also known and much liked Fletcher's wacky, lovely wife Gloria, who died driving...
...happenstance is Usher's discovery that Gloria Fletcher had in fact been killed by her tycoon husband. The don also finds out that Fletcher is a front man for John P. Harrigan, godfather of Boston's Irish Mafia, whose laundered money is being used for suspicious purchases abroad. Through the delectable Alyss Summers, an art historian, Usher learns that Harrigan has stolen a Donatello statue of St. John the Baptist, as well as a relic of the saint, from a church in Siena. Between lectures Usher gets involved in a gang war, a stratagem to rescue the Donatello...
DIED. Harold Urey, 87, Nobel-prizewinning chemist whose 1931 discovery with two colleagues of the heavy form of hydrogen called deuterium helped usher in the nuclear age and led to the development of the hydrogen bomb; of a heart attack; in La Jolla, Calif. An Indiana clergyman's son who remained a lifelong critic of military force, Urey was an innovative researcher in a wide range of scientific fields. He was considered the father of modern lunar science for his speculations about the moon's geology. During World War II his work in separating the heavy or isotope...
...grapeviners are chortling over the latest rumor, featuring Nancy the demon decorator (with a reprise of the axwoman theme). According to the story, Nancy, while touring her next home, was upset by the appearance of the Lincoln Bedroom. "That wall has to go," she announced. White House Chief Usher Rex Scouten explained that the room is historic and should not be touched, which only convinced Mrs. Reagan that Scouten too had to go. "I want him fired," rumors had her saying. Nancy denies the story. So does Scouten. But none of that discourages scandal lovers, who can hardly wait until...