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>> The Ghost and the Gumshoe Julie Robitaille Summary from Backcover: It's the mid-1990s. Sam Beckett is a brilliant scientist, and the creator of the Quantum Leap project - moving back and forth through the years of your own lifetime. After being transported back to 1956 by mistake, Sam's efforts to return keep him trapped away from his own time. Not only that, but he is forced to take the place of people he has never known or even heard of. Slipping constantly into one life after another, and having to right the wrongs in that life and hopefully change things for the better, Sam is a man out of time - all the time! ISBN: #0-552-13643-3 (UK) Copyright: 1990 by MCA Publishing Rights Printing History: Corgi edition published 1990 Pages: 192 Excerpt: "I found Phil emptying a bottle with a hand shakier than a grass skirt on Waikiki. He looked like a cat working on his ninth life ever since he heard a dropper named Klapper was looking for him."  I sat, stunned for a moment, because those words were words I knew. That was it, I realized! All the déjà vu experiences I'd been having weren't déjà vu at all. They were familiar, predictable, because I'd read them - Sam Beckett had read them: I had read this book!Aghast, I flipped through the manuscript, encountering stale similes and cut-rate Chandlerisms on every page. Some of them made me wince. "She was a flamer," I read aloud. "A redhead that could make father Flanagan forget Boy's Town." "Ouch." I shook my head. "My first wife was a lot like that," Al remarked as he popped into sight. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Makes me kind of wonder why we got divorced." "Al!" I exclaimed. "Look at this!" I pointed to the manuscript. "Very bad writing," he agreed. "No, I mean, yes it is, but that's not the point!" I said excitedly. "This is a manuscript Nick is writing - and I read it! Published. That's why I kept having what I thought was déjà vu, but it's not!" "Thus ruining a concept way ahead of it's time," Al remarked. I ignored his comment. "Listen, I figured it out," I said. "Nick and Allison were in love, but they were too loyal to do anything about it!" Al raised one eyebrow. "I've seen the lady," he said pointedly. I waved the comment off. "Listen," I said, and read aloud to him. "The heat between us was like a six day jaunt in the Sahara, but our ties to Phil were as tight as the drunk on the corner stool." |