Beat the Devils

This inventive, page-turning crime thriller, shortlisted for the Sidewise Award, with " palpable emotional depth" (New York Times  Book Review) envisions a world in which the Red Scare never ended.

USA, 1958. President Joseph McCarthy sits in the White House, elected on a wave of populist xenophobia and  barely‑ concealed  anti‑ Semitism. The country is in the firm grip of McCarthy' s  Hueys, a secret police force evolved from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hollywood' s sparkling vision of the American dream has been  suppressed;   its remaining talents forced to turn out  endless  anti‑ communist propaganda.

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. The victims are John Huston, a  once‑ promising  but now forgotten film director, and an up‑ and‑ coming young journalist named Walter Cronkite. 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. 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.   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.