The Toll

by Michael Mewshaw

Under the glare of the Moroccan sun unfolds a novel of unsurpassed suspense and terrifying human implications. Ted Kuyler, a tough, unsentimental soldier of fortune, is hired by four wealthy American youths— self-styled revolutionaries— to spring a friend from a filthy Moroccan jail. But their common purpose soon turns to rivalry— then to bribery, deceit, and bloody death. In an electrifying trek of horror and hardship across the parched desert, the youths' illusions of moral superiority and guerrilla pretensions are swept aside by a searing, fatal confrontation with the primitive animal laws of survival.

331 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 1975

About the author

Michael Mewshaw is an American author of 11 novels and 8 books of nonfiction, and works frequently as a travel writer, investigative reporter, book reviewer, and tennis reporter. His novel Year of the Gun was made into a film of the same name by John Frankenheimer in 1991. He is married with two sons.

Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio's longtime "voice of books," has called him "the best novelist in America that nobody knows."