Part of V.I. Warshawski, book 16
First published 2013
V.I. Warshawski gets a call from her closest friend, Dr. Lotty Herschel. Lotty needs help protecting the daughter of Kitty Saginor Binder, her childhood companion from Vienna. The two women escaped Nazi Germany together on the Kindertransport in 1939, but now Kitty's daughter faces deadly threats in modern Chicago. What starts as a favor for Lotty pulls V.I. into a web of deception stretching back decades. The danger stems from buried secrets about the race to build the atomic bomb during World War II. America, Germany, Japan, and England competed fiercely to develop nuclear weapons first, and some participants never revealed what they knew. Those old secrets have survived into the present day, protected by people who will kill to keep them hidden. V.I. must uncover the truth about wartime scientific research while keeping an innocent woman alive. The case forces her to confront how the Holocaust shaped her friend Lotty's life and how the atomic age's legacy continues to claim victims.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, crime, thriller, action
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: amateur-sleuth, enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Chicago, Vienna, Germany
Period: World War II, Modern Day
480 pages · Hardcover · G. P. Putnam's Sons
Content warnings: death, violence