Seeds of a new corn plant are stolen from Oxford University's botany lab,

and the professor, Alastair Scott, and his Russian assistant, Tanya

Petrovskaya, are missing.

Alarms ring in London and Washington, where intelligence officials know that

Scott was working on a supergene that could allow control over the world's

entire food supply.

The British government calls in Arthur Hemmings from the Royal Botanic

Gardens at Kew. To his coworkers, Hemmings is just another researcher in the

herbarium, but for many years he has been a secret service agent, an

outwardly rumpled but dashing covert adventurer.

Officials see a Moscow plot. Has Scott been kidnapped? Is he dead? Have Scott

and Tanya fled to Russia? And why is Oxford's vice-chancellor withholding

vital information?

The intrepid Hemmings follows a series of clues into the cutthroat world of

international patents, where the hunt for priceless genes is always nasty and

often deadly.

In Arthur Hemmings, Pringle has created an original heartbreaker of a hero,

a botanist detective with a dash of James Bond. Facing murderous threats,

Hemmings investigates fearlessly and with devastating precision. Handsome,

witty, an ambitious cook, and a wine lover, he is irresistible to a much

younger American female researcher.

Day of the Dandelion is a seductive modern hybrid of the thrillers of

Graham Greene and the adventure novels of Ian Fleming, filled with political,

scientific, and commercial intrigue, and laced with miracle plants, deadly

toxins, kidnappings, and car chases. It will keep the reader in suspense and

amused from prelude to postscript.