Rathbone, Julian

London. 1986. Heinemann. 1st British Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket . 0434623911. 246 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Peter Dyer. keywords: Mystery England . FROM THE PUBLISHER - In an alleyway in San JosE, Costa Rica, a botanist is shot to pieces, and the specimens he is carrying are stolen. A thriving coffee cooperative in the mountains runs into sudden opposition from the authorities. An agricultural field station in Nicaragua is wiped out in a surprise attack, and three years' research destroyed. These events and the brutal killings that follow are the consequences of a covert operation mounted by Greenfinger Incorporated, a subsidiary of the giant Associated Foods International. A commando group trained on SS lines and an ex-SAS contract killer have been given their orders: Destroy Zdt, and anyone who bus knowledge of it. Kit Coder, an agricultural economist working for the United Nations Agricultural and Food Organisation, fights to save the coffee cooperative. With his beautiful and vibrant black wife Esther, he uncovers ugly truths that put his life in mortal danger. In an unbearably thrilling climax it is Esther, with her eight-month-old daughter, who has to face out the forces of evil alone. ZDT is a thrilling entertainment - an ingenious adventure that leads the reader from an English county town to the beaches of Tenerife and high up into the canopy of the tropical rain forest. A novelist of international distinction, twice short-listed for the Booker Prize, Julian Rathbone proves himself once more to be a master of suspense. inventory #14641 ISBN: 0434623911.