Hour of the Cat

This novel of corruption and murder “illuminates New York City on the eve of WWII” (Publishers Weekly). It’s just another murder, one of the hundreds of simple homicides in 1939: A spinster nurse is killed in her apartment; a suspect is caught with the murder weapon and convicted. PI Fintan Dunne, though, feels compelled to unravel the complex setup that has put an innocent man on Death Row. He will soon find this is a murder with tentacles that stretch far beyond the crime scene . . . to Nazi Germany, in fact. In Berlin, meanwhile, plans for a military coup are forming among a cadre of Wehrmacht officers. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Military Intelligence, is gripped by a deadly paralysis: He is neither with the plotters nor against them. Joining them in treason would violate every value he holds as an officer. Betraying the plotters to the Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich might just forsake the country’s last hope to avert utter destruction and centuries of shame. Heydrich is suspicious. With no limits to Hitler’s manic pursuit of territorial expansion, with crimes against the people candy-coated as racial purification, every German conscience must make a choice. And Fintan Dunne will be led into a murder conspiracy of a scope that defies imagination. “A good choice for those who enjoy a rich, stylish period piece that, like Philip Roth’s The Plot against America, explores the fickle fate of men and nations and the destructive power of a really bad idea.” —Booklist “Intelligent, ironic, well-written suspense that makes us think.” —James Patterson