The Hidden Treasure Files

This is the second in the current series of Will James mystery novels, this time, the anti- establishment private investigator and his crew are asked to help unravel a mystery that begins in a Brooklyn antique store and ends in the most unlikely of locations.

Every Sunday morning, precisely at 10:30 sharp, there is an auction held in a sparsely furnished back room of Better Times Remembered, a small neighborhood antique store in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Albert Froog, the owner of the store and self declared auctioneer, personally chooses the items for each week's auction. Generally these items are fairly ordinary but become more interesting because of the back story he is able to weave around them. At times there is even a speck of truth in the story he tells.

At this particular Sunday morning auction, one of the items he offers up is a prohibition era permit in a battered old wooden frame authorizing the manufacture of alcohol. It was one of many items he acquired in an estate purchase. On his inventory sheet he has assigned a value of 50 cents to one dollar for this item because so many similar permits were issued during prohibition and the frame is of little or no value.

Hoping he will wind up with something between 50 cents and a dollar he starts the bidding at 2.00.

To his surprise and amazement two separate people quickly bid the price up to 100,000.

"Who would pay 100,000 for this piece of junk?" Froog asks himself. "What do they know that I don't?"

When the head of the New York Mafia family also shows interest in the item Froog becomes doubly convinced that he really has a hidden treasure on his hands. If you think you know how this will all end you are so very, very wrong.

As with all Will James Mysteries, the numerous twists and turns will keep you reading and guessing until the very last page.