CYCLE B  |  Book 2

Circle of Fire

PREVIEW | Circle of Fire

Corporate lawyer Alan Barrington occupies a well-appointed office located in the picturesque college town of Lucerna, just north of Toronto.  Lucerna is home to one of Alan's clients, Rayneval University.  

Alan is reading a file that contains newspaper reports detailing the murder of a one-time history professor at Rayneval, Gina Vasari.  She was forty-five years old at the time of her death, and she evidently turned up regularly at dance clubs frequented by people looking for partners who enjoy sadomasochistic sex.  On a cold night the previous January she picked up the wrong person.  She ended up dead.  The killer remained at large.

The file also contained information about a young woman named Kari LaMarca, a one-time student at Rayneval, whom Dr. Vasari had befriended.  Until a few weeks ago, Miss LaMarca had been living in Yellowknife, a city in northern Canada's north.  She'd been working as a truck driver.  Her employer was Tavco, another of Alan's clients.  She was now here in Lucerna.

Tavco had funded some historical work that Gina Vasari had been engaged in.  After her death, no record of this work was found.  Dag Tanager, Tavco's owner, inexplicably decided to find out whether it was completed.  The task was one he assigned to Ms. LaMarca.  He invited her to go to Lucerna and find out what became of it.  Alan needs to somehow kill this quixotic idea in its cradle. 

Alan guesses that the real Gina Vasari was nothing like the woman portrayed in the accounts of her murder.  But what kind of woman was she?  Alan also guesses that Ms. LaMarca won't stop until she answers this very same question.

The problem, of course, is that efforts to find answers come at a cost.  And there are times when the cost is huge.  Alan knows this.  He wishes that Ms. LaMarca knew it too.  His file tells him she doesn't.