CYCLE A  |  Book 1 

Flight of Unknowing

PREVIEW | Flight of Unknowing

Malory Ballantyne would rather not be in the prison where he has now found himself: the small college town of Lucerna, located just north of Toronto.  But before he can escape, he has a couple of jobs to do.  The first is a cover.  It's to look into the death of two lesbian lovers, Lorelle Delambre and Alison Mansel.  Maybe their deaths were suicides.  But it's also possible that they were murdered.  Malory has agreed to find out whether this latter alternative is likely.

His second job is the real reason he's in Lucerna.  It's to get to know a young woman named Karina Qadira.  She is someone he encountered on a previous occasion, although not face to face.  She'd then been using a sniper rifle, and she demonstrated that she knew how to use it.  The name she's using here in Lucerna is Kari LaMarca.

Malory needs to make their next encounter seem accidental, and he has a strategy that he believes will accomplish this.  It's one that causes him to interview Tamara Santillana, a historian formerly at Yale who is intimately familiar with the work Lorelle was doing at the time of her death.  The interview does not go well.  Tamara makes it clear that she regards him as a nuisance.

Malory is able to tackle job one more directly.  He approaches Wendy Warfield, a wealthy American lawyer and political activist.  Wendy is an ex-lover of Lorelle, and she tells him that if anyone deserves to be charged with Lorelle's murder, it's her.  She dares him to prove her guilt.

Malory quickly discovers that all three of these women — Tamara, Wendy, and Kari — have created formidable barriers around themselves. Who are they? And what brought them to this small Canadian town?  He's uncomfortably aware that one or more of them will soon be asking similar questions about him.