Spartan Gold (Fargo Adventures)

When an archeologist friend requests their help to excavate a top-secret historical site, the Fargos are intrigued. But they have no idea that their discoveries will set them on a hunt for a prize beyond all imagination.

The clues point to the hidden tomb of Attila the Hun, who was reportedly buried with a vast fortune of gold, jewels, and plunder: a bounty that has never been found.

As they follow a trail throughout Europe, it leads them not to one tomb, but five. The Fargos also find themselves pitted against a thieving group of treasure hunters, a cunning Russian businessman, and a ruthless Hungarian who claims direct descent from Attila himself—and will stop at nothing to achieve his destiny…

It is 1902, and a bright, inexperienced young man named Isaac Bell, only two years out of his apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, has an urgent message for his boss. Hired to hunt for radical unionist saboteurs in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident that makes him think that something else is going on, that provocateurs are at work and bigger stakes are in play.

Little does he know just how big they are. Given exactly one week to prove his case, Bell quickly finds himself pitted against two of the most ruthless opponents he has ever known, men of staggering ambition and cold-bloodedness . . . who are not about to let some wet-behind-the-ears detective stand in their way.

It is 1902, and a bright, inexperienced young man named Isaac Bell, only two years out of his apprenticeship at the Van Dorn Detective Agency, has an urgent message for his

boss. Hired to hunt for radical unionist saboteurs in the coal mines, he is witness to a terrible accident that makes him think that something else is going on, that provocateurs are at work and bigger stakes are in play.

Little does he know just how big they are. Given exactly one week to prove his case, Bell quickly finds himself pitted against two of the most ruthless opponents he has ever known, men of staggering ambition and cold-bloodedness . . . who are not about to let some wet-behind-the-ears detective stand in their way.

Grant Blackwood caught the fiction-writing bug at the age of eighteen while reading Clive Cussler’s The Mediterranean Caper , and spent the next four years working in different styles of fiction before settling on novel-length work.

Mr. Blackwood is a U.S. Navy veteran, having spent three years active duty aboard the guided missile frigate USS Ford as an Operations Specialist and a Pilot Rescue Swimmer.

Two months after leaving the Navy in July 1987, Mr. Blackwood started the first draft of his first novel, which as he puts it, “wasn’t good enough to be published, but good enough to earn a spot in my sock drawer. It took me several more years of rewriting before I realized the publishers and agents who’d been saying ‘no’ were saying no for a good reason.”

Twelve years to the day after leaving the Navy, Mr. Blackwood received an offer from Penguin-Putnam/Berkley to buy his second novel, The End of Enemies, which hit the stands May 8th.

Mr. Blackwood is 36 years old and lives in Minnesota, where he is working on this next novel, the second in the Briggs Tanner series of thrillers, which is due out in Spring/Summer of 2002.