Diplomatic Baggage

Having built a healthy following for his Japanese police detective, Superintendent Tetsuo Otani over the course of 13 novels, Melville here introduces a new series hero, cultural attach Ben Lazenby of the British Foreign Service. The newly divorced Lazenby is posted to Hungary in the spring of 1982 and settles into a comfortable routine-which is thoroughly disrupted when he's given the seemingly simple assignment of escorting two truckloads of valuable British art from Budapest to Bucharest and back again. The job ought to be a snap, but a beautiful Finnish journalist, desperate to smuggle an incriminating tape out of Romania, foists herself upon him; two peculiar Gypsy children have a disconcerting habit of turning up in the strangest of places; and one of the trucks goes missing. Both the Hungarian and Romanian intelligence services, not to mention the KGB, become convinced that Lazenby is up to something nefarious as he bumbles his way through all the confusion. But Lazenby has no reason to complain: all the mayhem leads luscious British lecturer Emma Jarvis into his bed. Better yet, her talents there are matched by an equally useful skill learned from an uncle back in England, which she gets to employ at a crucial time. Lazenby is no James Bond. He's easily frightened and nearly as easily fooled, but his misadventures are great fun. (Jan.)