"The Elephant Mask" is the fourth "Humboldt Prior Mystery." Now an aging executive of a troubled computer company, Prior is given responsibility for a promising new project that applies computer science to Latin American archeology. From the ruins of the ancient Moche people, the project surfaces the strange problem of the Elephant Mask and then nearly dissolves in a mysterious triple assassination. Prior travels to Lima, Peru to try to salvage the project. There, he is entangled by unscrupulous enemies, unpredictable old friends, and the assets and liabilities of his distant past. In Peru,...

"The fifth Humboldt Prior mystery" is a story of economic greed, murder, intellectual racism, and more murder. A casualty of a traumatic, Silicon Valley corporate takeover, Humboldt Prior, now 60 years old, relocates to his midwestern hometown, where he has been offered a position as a university lecturer on information technology. There he finds himself entwined in a pair of mysterious crimes, one scientific, and one financial, and both leading to murder. At the request of high government officials, Prior acts alone, unknown to his college and local police authorities. His only help comes...