Although this book was chosen as our "suspense" pick for the club, I didn't find it so much suspenseful as I did a time a time capsule back to the days of old Hollywood, when there were real movie stars. Nevertheless, the mystery is a good one, and just when I thought I had it all figured out, something new would happen, and change everything.

Did not enjoy it-- too many characters to keep track of and dialogue was hard to follow

It’s post-World War II, and Ben Collier, on leave from the U.S. Army Signal Corp in Germany, has come to Los Angeles. His brother Danny, a director there, has fallen from a balcony and is now in a coma and near death. Danny dies soon after Ben's arrival, almost immediately after Danny awakens to beg Ben not to leave him.

Ben discovers that this was not an accident and not attempted suicide. Danny was somehow involved in the beginnings of the “witch hunt” for Communists in Hollywood, and someone wanted him dead. Now Ben tries to be Danny and hunt for Communists, hoping he will learn who murdered him.

At the same time, Ben is putting together a documentary. He wants the world to see what had been going on in the concentration camps during World War II. He has convinced an owner of one of the Hollywood movie studios to provide him with what the Army could not so he can produce this. Therefore, he is intimately involved with the goings on at the studio and with the people who worked with Danny there.

Joseph Kanon, who has written four previous novels of historical fiction (THE GOOD GERMAN, LOS ALAMOS, THE PRODIGAL SPY, and ALIBI), once again presents historical fiction as thriller/mystery. So this book is action packed and hard to put down while the reader learns about this historical period.

And once again I give Kanon’s novel an A.