Philosophy, poetry mark caper

Terry England | The New Mexican

3/2/2008 - 3/2/08

EMERALD PASSAGE

By Christopher Murphy

I Universe
306 pages, $18.95
On the surface, Emerald Passage is about some stolen emeralds. But, as in many caper stories, the pretty stones pretty much are irrelevant.

Santa Fe author Christopher Murphy really piles on the eccentric characters who are after the stones, or who float around them. The main protagonist is Roland or Rollo Runyan or Ransome; by the end of the story, you can pretty much pick your favorite name.

The ostensible plot here is Runyan trying to recover emeralds stolen from him by a rogue Russian. He's in London and the emeralds are in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He takes a flight to Lisbon where he'll change planes. On the flight, though, he meets an engaging woman, Sophie, who beguiles him into delaying his departure.

On the flight from Lisbon to Miami, he meets Stella, a starlet in her 20s who helps Roland get some papers that belonged to a partner translated. On the flight from Miami to Rio, he meets yet another beguiling woman, Ludmilla or Lucy or Lucia — names are flexible here — in the company of a domineering Brazilian singer and a mousy nun. Ludmilla helps him with more translations, and they learn that a poem is a code for getting the bank in Rio to release the emeralds.

Once in Rio, things really get going, especially when Roland finds out the truth about Ludmilla. Sophie and Stella also turn up, and the story becomes a circus as everyone chases the emeralds by attending a costume party. Then it's off to a sailboat race back to England.

On top of all this is a subplot about blowing up oil wells in the Mideast that might or might not be real.

It's not all action; there's a lot of poetry and philosophizing going on here, too. Roland manages to write lyrics for the Brazilian singer, who predicts the song will be huge. Conversations tend to go into esoteric areas, and Roland does a lot of cogitating about life, love and money. There's a spiritual message Murphy has embedded here, too, which comes clear toward the end.

Even so, all of this adds up to an engaging whole.


England was the Books page editor.