Travelling Circus

Maximillian Bacchus is the ringmaster, ruler, guide, and owner of what he considers the greatest show in the world. Traveling with a crocodile named Malachi, a trapeze girl named Ophelia, a strongman they call Hero (which is short for Hieronymus), and a clown named Domingo de Ybarrondo, who paints in a wagon pulled by a giant ibis bird, the troupe wanders from adventure to adventure with mythic aplomb.

Bruno Wildermann of the Wrinfield Circus is the world’s greatest trapeze artist, a clairvoyant with near-supernatural powers and an implacable enemy of the East European regime that arrested his family and murdered his wife. The CIA needs such a man and recruits Bruno for an impossible raid—on the impregnable Lubylan fortress, where his family his held. Under cover of a circus tour, Bruno prepares to return to his homeland. But before the journey even begins a murderer strikes twice. Somewhere in the circus there is a communist agent with orders to stop Bruno at any cost.

When the body of journalist Duncan Brown is found in the back of a rubbish truck, Inspector John Carlyle is thrown into the middle of a scandal that threatens to expose the corrupt links between the police, the political establishment, and the hugely powerful Zenger media group. Hunting down Brown's killer, Carlyle finds himself going head to head with his nemesis, Trevor Miller. A former police officer turned security adviser to the Prime Minister, Miller has dirty money in his pockets and other people's blood on his hands. Untouchable until now, he is prepared to kill again to protect his position.

Nothing bad ever happens in the quiet little town of Hope. However, when the circus rolls in one misty morning in late October, everyone decides to go see what they have. Even the Jorgenson family and their 8 year old son Noah head on down to the circus big top, but when it is time to leave he is nowhere to be found. With the help of Sheriff Langley, his parents search the premises, but they don't find him. Now that it is closing time, they are forced to leave in hopes that he will come home. Will they ever find him and all the other children that have gone missing from other towns?