Ace of Wands

The laboratory of Nobel Prize-winning Professor Ekdorf is broken into, and a device that can cure paralysis is stolen. Realising the harm that such a machine could cause if in the wrong hands, Professor Ekdorf goes to his friend Mr. Sweet, an antiquarian bookseller, for help.

Mr. Sweet turns to his colleague Tarot, a mystery-solving stage magician, who, with the aid of his stage-manager, Sam Maxted, immediately sets off to track down the thieves. While following a villain named Teddy Talk, Tarot and Sam, together with Lulli Palmer, Tarot’s assistant, discover that the brains behind the theft is Madame Midnight, head of a Mafia-like organisation run from a monastery.

Madame Midnight plans to sell the stolen device to the highest bidder, and arranges for a demonstration for the various interested parties from around the world. Unfortunately, the subjects for the demonstration are Sam and Lulli…

Tarot is asked to investigate the mysterious disappearance of two important government ministers; intrigued, Tarot, Sam and Lulli set off to track them down.

The kidnappings point to a strange house owned by Señor Zandar, which is bizarrely populated by goats, a donkey and even a Zulu warrior.

After Lulli is captured by Zandar, she is hypnotised and then used to lure Tarot into a trap.

The two of them are imprisoned deep in the cellar by Zandar’s assistant Fat Boy - and left alone with a deadly poisonous snake...

After a daring robbery takes place at his bank, the manager seeks the help of Mr. Sweet; the bookseller turns once more to Tarot for his help in solving the crime, and so the magician and his friends set off on the trail of the thieves. They are led to the mysterious Falk, a neo-Nazi who lives aboard a houseboat filled with computers and paraphernalia from the Third Reich.

Falk and his associate, Macreedy are about to put a devious master-plan into operation - but Tarot has a plan of his own, and soon a dramatic confrontation at Battersea Power Station occurs…

Mr. Sweet is invited to the Bond Street art gallery owned by Bartlett Bonnington; however, when Sam and Lulli go in his place, they soon find themselves in the middle of a very strange robbery. An old lady named Mrs. Kite uses a pair of lorgnettes to freeze time, enabling an oriental art-thief named Tun-Ju to steal a valuable painting named ‘The Carzette Venus’.

After a tip-off from a taxi driver named Digger, Sam tracks the old lady to a Chinese restaurant; however, when Tarot later investigates he becomes the victim of Tun-Ju’s mind-wiping machine. Luckily a squawk from his pet owl Ozymadias is able to restore his memory.

Meanwhile, Tun-Ju is now planning his life’s ambition: to steal the priceless ‘Mona Lisa’ from the Louvre; he hypnotises Sir Patrick Landau into painting a duplicate so that he can then switch the fake for the real one.

Tarot, Sam and Lulli attempt to stop him, but once again find themselves at the mercy of the ingenious oriental - and faced with the prospect of being reverted back to children…