The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

In the third novel about the Archonate, a galactic civilization featuring a drastically transformed Earth millions of years hence, Hughes pairs Baro Harkless, a conservative young inspector from the Archonate Bureau of Scrutiny, and corpulent but ingeniously resourceful con artist Luff Imbry. At first, Imbry is simply another of the inspector's targeted scofflaws, but after Harkless puts him away, presumably for good, the Archonate inexplicably drops the charges and makes Imbry his partner. Flustered but dutiful, Harkless grudgingly agrees that Imbry is the perfect assistant for his next assignment: nabbing the greatest flimflam artist of all, Horselyn Gebbling, master criminal and the former partner who betrayed Imbry. Gebbling, it seems, is trying to fleece the victims of a fatal disease called lassitude by promising its cure in the form of a nonexistent mineral, black brillion. Hughes serves up equal measures of wit, intrigue, and seat-of-the-pants action and even dabbles a little in Jungian psychology when Harkless discovers a talent for plumbing humanity's collective unconscious.