Presenting EVAN TANNER—the first series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain's sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world's languages (he's fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world's lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge. And, most important, time to do his dreaming while he's wide awake.

Me Tanner, You Jane is Tanner's seventh adventure, and the first to take him to the African continent. We first encounter Tanner as a man named Nikita says, "We will bury you," but the Nikita in question is not Premier Khrushchev, nor is he speaking metaphorically. Tanner is in Modonoland, and his comrades in the Pan African Unity League do in fact bury him—alive. That he is able to disinter himself, that he winds up enlisted in a terrorist band under the aegis of the beautiful Sheena, that the menu at the group's triumphal feast contains a dish he's never had any wish to try—oh, it's a Tanner book, isn't it? And haven't you learned to expect the unexpected?