The Empire of Night

Description

It is 1915, and 'Kit' Cobb is working undercover in a castle on the Kent coast owned by a suspected British government mole, Sir Albert Stockman. Kit is working with his mother, the beautiful and mercurial spy, Isabel Cobb, who also happens to be a world-famous stage actress. Isabel's offstage role is to keep tabs on Stockman, while Kit tries to figure out his agenda. Following his mother and her escort from the relative safety of Britain into the lion's den of Berlin, Kit must remain in character, even under the very nose of the Kaiser.

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including Hell, A Small Hotel, Perfume River, and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

he's [Butler] now fully into his stride -- Philip Burrell * Nudge * The plot has plenty of unexpected turns, and the characters of the main actors are explored in sufficient depth to make them interesting. Coupled with a well-developed historical setting, this is a book with plenty to enjoy -- Chris Roberts * Crime Review UK * Mr. Butler does a terrific job of depicting both the journalist's facility for teasing information from his subjects and the spy's incessant fear of being discovered. There's something almost magical about the way the author re-creates this 1915 milieu -- Tom Nolan * The Wall Street Journal * This is a tale of betrayal, treason, acting, pretending to be someone you're not -- Carole Colbert * Carole's Book Corner * The reader is totally caught up in Cobb's mission and its eventual denouement -- Jennifer Palmer * Promoting Crime Fictiton *