And yet, despite its occasionally gastropodous pacing, "Exile" delivers the sort of torn-from-the-headlines story Patterson's fans have come to expect.

Contributions towards a monograph of the Trochidae, a family of gastropodous Mollusca.

It went on in that fashion for hours, until, late in the night, or more precisely, early in the morning after the moon had set and human activity had flagged, the stick hopped up on the ledge beside the gastropodous undine and announced that he was going to the sea.