The Red Fox

The main character, Robert Thorne, is a middle-aging former embassy brat raised in world capitals. He has retired from journalism to earn his living as a free-lance writer and Russian expert. On the very anniversary of his father's suicide 20 years earlier, Thorne's estranged Canadian girlfriend, millionairess May Brightman, phones to tell him that her own father has just disappeared--a suicide? Will Thorne help find him? May reveals that she is adopted--she's absolutely certain this ties in. When Harry Brightman turns up dead in Detroit, an apparent suicide who has blown his face off with a shotgun in his gorgeous Mark VII Jaguar saloon, Thorne goes there to support May and spare her having to identify the body--although he's never met the dead man. His sleuthing, however, leads him into a strange area where he feels that he's uncovering as much about himself as he is about Brightman and the mystery of who May's real father is. Some evidence points to May being Brightman's illegitimate daughter whom he legitimized through adoption. But Thorne finds that May's "lost" mother was actually…