A Case of Virga
Volume 4: Zen and the Art of Investigation
by
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About the Book
Clues that solve a crime can be as evanescent as virga: rain that falls in the desert which the desert’s rising heat evaporates before the rain has a chance to reach the ground. Using Zen’s pragmatic approach to discover the complexity of a crime that had been regarded as ‘cut and dry,’ Beryl Tilson and Sensei Percy Wong of Wagner & Tilson, Private Investigators, apply their skill and intuition to free a man who has been wrongly accused of murder. The biggest clue to solving this mystery is in the false evidence that was submitted at trial. A gun which was alleged to have lain in the Sonora desert for 5 hours in July was apparently picked up without “pot holders” - directly in the hand and shown to a covering TV camera. This cannot happen. But the defense attorneys are not desert people and know only Hollywood versions of desert life. Beryl Tilson has lived in the Mojave and understands sun and heat. Nobody can pick up metal that has been lying in the sun for half an hour much less 5 hours. (Also you can never see sweaty shirts in the desert. Perspiration evaporates as fast as you can produce it.)
About the Author
To the author, Anthony Wolff is more than a pseudonym. It’s a dedication to one of the finest men who ever graced the planet.
Anthony Wolff, the author, who is paying tribute to Anthony Wolff, the great guy, is a fully ordained Zen Buddhist Priest. The reader may question Wolff’s literary credentials. It’s a free country, or at least used to be. Wolff’s clerical credentials, however, are pretty impressive even to the most jaded among us. Wolff was the first American to be ordained in The People’s Republic of China since the
Communist Revolution.
No small potatoes. The ordination took place in the hallowed precincts of Nan Hua Si, the monastery founded by 6th Patriarch Hui Neng in AD 675. The reader may be assured that the wisdom that drips from every cracked line is good Zen stuff.
Wolff knows the detectives who have solved these cases. They aren’t perfect people, but since there are no perfect people on the planet, that is hardly news. Their actions are more eloquent than anything Wolff is capable of writing.