Presenting Evan Tanner - the first series character created by Lawrence Block, best-selling author of A Walk Among the Tombstones....

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain's sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world's languages (he's fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world's lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge. And, most important, time to do his dreaming while he's wide awake.

When his girlfriend, T'pani "Tuppence" Ngawa, disappears on a jazz tour of Thailand, Tanner flies to Bangkok, slips his CIA escort, and rushes to the rescue-only to wind up caged by bandits, who plan to behead him at daybreak. He enlists a young and sexually inexperienced Thai, Dhang, with the promise that he'll get him laid. Their escape route ultimately leads to North Vietnam-and, eventually, into the DMZ. Oh, you don't really expect a summary of a Tanner adventure to make sense, do you? It's a wild ride, partly by bullock cart, and no one but Tanner could bring it off....