Ask for Me Tomorrow

About the Book

Lawrence Kane, a good but only moderately successful playwright, is asked by Roger Baldwin to do some freelance research for him. The job pays very well, so Kane reluctantly accepts. He has particular misgivings when Baldwin “commits suicide” in Montreal after giving Kane his assignment. The job entails collecting data on cruelty to animals as part of a comprehensive project detailing abuses of all sorts – to people and animals – for a large and well-funded organization. Kane is assigned to Spain to chronicle bullfighting. Baldwin has agreed that Kane can takes his girlfriend, Marie, who is a photographer. During the assignment, Kane stumbles onto a conspiracy. The job he has, indeed, the entire “abuse” project is a cover up for the activities of larger organizations in charge of loans to developing nations. Most of the money for projects – dams, schools, disease prevention – is funneled to a few powerful men, using banks in Spain. What Kane learns is very dangerous to him and to Marie. Before they can leave Sevilla, they are kidnapped to Cordoba. They escape and split up. Kane’s enemies have stolen his passport, but he escapes to Brussels, where he meets Baldwin’s widow, Olivia. She fills him in on further details of the vast network he has accidentally uncovered. He gets to the U.S. and wishes he could do something about what he has learned. The problem is that no man honest enough and powerful enough would be willing to make the accusation against the organizations involved. Then Kane realizes that he has met such a man in Spain. The man responds positively, but it looks as if the case will fail since no one can prove that the principals have ever contacted each other. If only, Kane thinks, they had the photo that Marie had taken of those men in Sevilla! Kane believes that the film was confiscated by one of the men’s body guards. Meanwhile, Olivia has been taken hostage, as a surety that Kane will not testify that he has seen the three chiefs of the conspiracy together. After Kane sets Olivia free, Marie surprises him by coming up with the piece of evidence that will clinch the case against the most powerful and widespread fraud ever devised.

The novel moves from Montreal to Spain to Mexico to Florida to Maine and Massachusetts, each location providing authentic background for the fast-paced action.

About the Author

H R Coursen was born in New Jersey and attended Amherst College, where he boxed, and played lacrosse, football, squash, and tennis. He has published nine novels, twenty six books of poetry, and some fifteen critical works. He was a fighter pilot in the USAF in the 1950s and an early opponent of the war in Vietnam. He lives in Maine.