A Mystery Spanning Millennia Daisy Hayes was a sculptress, and blind since birth. In 1964 a French priest came to visit her at the collective studio in north London where she worked. He was fascinated by the impaired artist and told her, “There’s this program at the Vatican Museums, where people like you get an opportunity to study archaeological artifacts by touch. Are you interested?” — “Of course, mon Père!” In AD 64 a blind masseuse working at the baths in Rome overheard some important men preparing to set fire to the city and seize power. When they found out that she knew too much, they had her arrested and tried to eliminate her. She decided she had to leave a message revealing the plot, and did everything she could to save her hide. So, as a Vatican intern 1900 years later, Daisy uncovered a mysterious message from antiquity: the Desiderata stone. “Without using any mixed metaphors, Nick Aaron pushes the envelope further than ever before, but still manages to land on his feet quite elegantly. Dizzying!” — The Weekly Banner This 78k novel is a stand-alone in the Blind Sleuth series The Blind Sleuth Mysteries Daisy Hayes was born in London in 1922. Her father was a bank manager, hoping for a son, but he had to settle for a blind daughter. Now what do you do when your child is blind since birth and you have the means to do all that is necessary to help her? You hire a private tutor to stimulate her verbal development in the first years of her life, because you realize how vital language will become for her. Then you send her to an exclusive school where everything is done to develop the minds and resourcefulness of blind girls. There they teach them all these fancy techniques of spatial orientation and mind mapping. And before you know it, your darling daughter has developed an exceptional intellect that just seems to draw murder mysteries like a magnet… The Blind Sleuth Mysteries form a portrait of the twentieth century as witnessed by this remarkable blind woman. In ‘D for Daisy’, for instance, our protagonist takes us along with her through World War II. ‘Daisy and Bernard’ brings us to 1989, the year the Berlin wall came down. At the same time these novels form the life story of Daisy herself. ‘First Spring in Paris’ and ‘Honeymoon in Rio’ take place in 1946 and 1952 respectively, and connect nicely to ‘D for Daisy’, that ends in 1950. Now ‘The Desiderata Stone’ takes us back to ancient Rome in AD 64, as well as 20th century Rome, 1964. Fasten your seat-belts. Read more