When a distraught young woman bursts into private investigator John Rainwater's office to announce that she has just escaped from a trio of kidnappers, it proves to be a perfect case for a six-foot, hard-muscled ex-Marine with a .45 automatic in his shoulder holster-none of which describes Rainwater. He much more closely resembles another character's sneering assessment: "middle-aged geek with a gun and an unmerited confidence in your ability to handle a hard chance." He is, however, a highly intelligent geek, with a flair for research, which leads him to discover that the mysterious White Stone about which his beautiful. green-eyed client, Morgana Trehane, was questioned by her captors could be the realization of the ancient alchemists' dream of turning base metal into gold. Or something far moreterrible could be at the heart of the web of lies, greed, appalling violence and great peril into which they find themselves drawn by Roni Miller, a heartless and possibly insane ex-Mossad agent. In the steadily darkening, serio-comic course of IDIOT'S TALE, Rainwater will experience unconsummated love, heroism owing more to luck than courage, unmerited wealth and looming annihilation presided over by the spirit of the most misanthropic man he ever knew.