CALL ME Mr MYSTIC - Pasta blanda

"Marilyn had told me in confiding tones that Raymond Galvani had ordered a raw quail's egg, a glass of root beer and a plate of popcorn for his meal, explaining that he had not yet come to terms with his jet lag and that his stomach was in a different time zone. As he had only flown in from Paris, I must confess I shared Marilyn's surprise, but I suppose an hour is a long time in the life of a house fly and so it could equally well be in the digestive tract of an American multi-billionaire." Such are Algie's early impressions of the new age tycoon, whose penchant for precious artefacts identifies him as the chosen buyer of the fabulous Cross of Medici. Algie, to his dismay, has been forced to negotiate its disposal on behalf of his friend, Percival, who has cunningly implicated him in its theft. Faced with the threat of prison, Algie's pomposity gives way to alarm as he is plucked from the cosy predictability of London and catapulted into the alarming eccentricity of California's finest.