Simon Morley (Si for his friends), a young talented artist, has to sketch soap bars in an advertising agency for a living, which is as boring as it sounds, until one single day changes his life completely. He is invited to participate in a top-secret project of the USA government. Before long he finds out that it has to do with time travels, but no time machines are involved – just careful recreation of the old surroundings where participants can live and absorb the atmosphere of the past, telling themselves they are already there – and then a little hypnosis does the rest.
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If you’d like to see the happiest woman in the world, you should have seen me on the day when I emerged from the library carrying under my arm an enormous volume. “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” published in the USA in 1988 is one of the greatest treasures the library has, and since the day I discovered its existence I wanted nothing else. Alas, another reader took it from under my nose, so I had to wait two more months before it was finally in my hands.
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This political detective story starts when people aboard the British military frigate Ariadne – one of NATO’s most advanced vessels of its time (the book is written in 1986) witness the crash of a mysterious plane they can’t identify. Engulfed in flames, it sinks in the Aegean, in the vicinity of Thera Island. About the same time they witness the last minutes of the plane they receive a SOS message from a sinking private yacht, also burning badly after an explosion. They arrive just in time to rescue six survivors from the yacht, but there is nobody to rescue from the plane.
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