This inventive, page-turning crime thriller with palpable emotional depth ( New York Times Book Review) envisions a world in which the Red Scare never ended.
In the course of his investigation, Baker stumbles into a conspiracy that reaches deep into the halls of power and uncovers a secret that could destroy the City of Angels--and the American ideal itself..
Did the two men die in an attack fueled by better-dead-than-red sentiment, as the Hueys are quick to conclude, or were they murdered in a cover-up designed to protect--or even set in motion--a secret plot connected to Baker\'s past? In a country where terror grows stronger by the day, and paranoia rises unchecked, Baker is determined to find justice for two men who raised their voices in a time when free speech comes at the ultimate cost.
Clutched in the hand of one of the dead men is a cryptic note containing the phrase Beat the Devils followed by a single name: Baker.
The victims are John Huston, a once-promising but now forgotten film director, and an up-and-coming young journalist named Walter Cronkite.
LAPD detective Morris Baker--a Holocaust survivor who drowns his fractured memories of the unspeakable in schnapps and work--is called to the scene of a horrific double-homicide.
Hollywood\'s sparkling vision of the American dream has been suppressed; its remaining talents forced to turn out endless anti-communist propaganda.
The country is in the firm grip of McCarthy\'s Hueys, a secret police force evolved from the House Un-American Activities Committee.
President Joseph McCarthy sits in the White House, elected on a wave of populist xenophobia and barely-concealed anti-Semitism.
USA, 1958.
This inventive, page-turning crime thriller with palpable emotional depth ( New York Times Book Review) envisions a world in which the Red Scare never ended
