Second Violin

Description

March 1938. The Germans take Vienna without a shot being fired. Covering Austria for the English press is a young journalist named Rod Troy. Back home his younger brother joins the CID as a detective constable. November 1938. Kristallnacht. The Jews leave Vienna - Sigmund Freud with an American escort on a sleeper train, the tailor Josef Hummel tied to the underside of a boxcar. June 1940. Tensions are rising and 'enemy aliens' are rounded up in London for internment, including Troy's own brother. In the midst of the chaos London's most prominent rabbis are being picked off one by one and Troy must race to stop the killer.

Named by the Daily Telegraph as one of 'Fifty Crime Writers to Read Before You Die' and selected by Time magazine as one of 'Six Detective Series to Savour,' Lawton's work has earned him comparisons to John le Carre and Alan Furst. Lawton lives in a remote hilltop village in Derbyshire.

One of the joys of reviewing crime fiction is that now and then one comes across . . . an author whose writing sets pulses racing and the jaded responses tingling. . . I entreat you, dear reader, to search out John Lawton and cherish him to your bosom, for he is truly an original. * Irish Times * Smart and gracefully written . . . It has been Lawton's achievement to capture, in first-rate popular fiction, the courage and drama -- and the widespread tomorrow-we-may-die exuberance -- of that terrible and thrilling moment in twentieth-century history. * Washington Post *