Stone 588 Author:Gerald A. Browne Stone 588 is an octahedral crystal that came into the hands of diamond merchan Philip Springer's father many years earlier. It lay ignored because it was so obviously flawed: a rough, whitish-opaque lump with a chipped corner, clearly of no commercial value. But Springer slowly becomes aware of its special qualities. It is Audrey, the woman he l... more »oves, who begins to shake his skepticism. Audrey is wealthy, beautiful, sensuous, smart, practical -- and, unlike Springer, physically adventurous. She believes that the stone has healing powers. She uses her elderly aunt Libby -- a woman of vast riches and vast (but subtly-wielded power) -- to prove it.
Springer, who wants to use it on his sick son, refuses fabulous sums for the Stone. When it's stolen, he organizes a heist of almost military proportions in an attempt to retrieve it. The magic gem comes into the hand of a depraved, multimillionaire female socialite, and the swirl of murder and trickery in which it involves its possessors or would-be possessors culminates in a frightening chase across the roof of St. Patrick's Cathedral. The story provides an intriguing inside view of the world's diamond trade, and a tingle for the spine on every page, while Browne uses his fine-cut prose to reveal the connections between greed and sexuality with what seems like uncanny precision.« less