FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sara Sgarlat, Publicity Director
434-296-2772, ext. 49
ssgarlat@hrpub.com

“Valtos provides an exciting detective story an enticing view
of the afterlife that will leave readers pondering,
wondering.”—Publishers Weekly

“Valtos has a writing style that is immediately engaging
and very readable. Part mystery, part visionary fiction,
Authenticator is a solid choice.”—Library Journal

     Locked away in the secret basement room of an obscure Pennsylvania clinic, Laura Duquesne is kept in a drug-induced stupor, strapped to a table and cut off from all contact with the outside world. Clinic officials deny any knowledge of her existence. Her medical records are missing and the physician who pronounced her dead has mysteriously vanished. Private eye Theo Nikonos doesn’t care about any of that. All that matters is that Laura Duquesne is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen—even though she happens to be dead—almost.

     Open The Authenticator to meet Theo Nikonos. He doesn’t care what Professor Debray wants to hire him for. He needs money and Debray will pay him well for his time. Now, as an investigator of near-death experiences, Theo thinks he has seen it all until he meets the beautiful Laura, a woman who has apparently traveled deeper into the afterlife than any other human being. But as Theo struggles to free her from her mysterious captors, he realizes that the forbidden knowledge she holds may result in a very real death for both of them. Mike Hammer meets “The X-Files” in this adventure-mystery that explores life, death, and the darkness in between.

     Valtos’ first novel, Resurrection (St. Martin’s Press), was the subject of the HBO film Almost Dead.

6x9, hardcover with jacket, 400 pages, ISBN 1-5717-149-6, February 2000