"Had it not sounded like the title of a thriller," writes the author, "I would have called this book The Four Mysteries of Peru." From one end of Peru to the other, he frequently found himself more of a Sherlock Holmes than a normal traveller.This book leads the reader on a fascinating conducted tour of this fabulous land.

    Their explorations in Inca territory three years ago were subject of a series of exciting films on BBC TV, and of a book: Journey Through a Forgotten Empire. Here they tell of their latest journey through legendary and largely impenetrable reaches of Bolivia and Peru in search of the lost gold of the Incas - the dream of treasure-hunters since the sixteenth century. But their attention was also captured by the £18,000,000 treasure said to lie beneath a ruined Jesuit church, now covered by dense jungle. Then, there were the rich buried vaults of silver, hidden by the Spanish pioneers high in the Andes, when their Indian slave miners rose in arms against them.