When the wife of one of Slovakia's most prominent businessmen is killed in a very public assassination, it looks like the bullets were meant for her husband. But could the wife of Oto Bogan have actually been one of the primary targets? And where has Bogan gone? Both he and his son have disappeared without a trace. Commander Jana Matinova was present at the party where the shooting took place, and she was the one who pushed Bogan out of the line of fire. As a witness to the crime, she's being told to stay away from the case, but her Colonel knows that he needs his best investigator on it. Jana must push through her own government's secretiveness and intransigence to discover what connects the murder of Klara Boganova to an anonymous man run down in Paris, a dead Turk with an icepick in his eye, and an international network of bank accounts linking back to the Second World War. The key to the case may lie with a mysterious, vagabond girl who has attached herself to Jana and who seems to be connected to the notorious international criminal Makine, AKA Koba. To solve the case and stop an ongoing series of murders, Jana must travel to Berlin and Paris and look back into the darkest period of Slovak history.

EDITORIAL REVIEW: “The novel's dramatic ending portends many new developments. . . . Slovakia [is] viable territory for intriguing crime stories.”—*Newsday* “Jana Matinova is an attractive character. She is a passionate young wife, a devoted mother, an intelligent and hardworking police officer, and a person whose years of seeing the worst of her society have not undermined her ability to hope and care. Genelin has allowed his readers to understand an area of the world hidden from Western eyes for a long time.”—*The Oregonian* Jana entered the Czechoslovak police force as young woman, married an actor, and became a mother. The Communist regime destroyed her husband, their love for one another, and her daughter’s respect for her. But she has never stopped being a seeker of justice. Now, she has risen to the rank of commander in the Slovak police force and is based in the capital, Bratislava, a crossroads of central Europe. She liaises with colleagues across the continent to track a master criminal whose crimes include extortion, murder, kidnapping, and the operation of a vast human trafficking network. This investigation takes her from Kiev in Ukraine to the headquarters of the European Community in Strasbourg, France; from Vienna to Nice during the Carnival, as she searches for a ruthless killer and the beautiful young Russian woman he is determined to either capture or destroy.

Devastated by her lover's death in an explosion - on the same day an indigent student was shot and killed in sleepy Bratislava - Jana is transferred to The Hague, headquarters of the international police force Europol. On the flight she encounters a retired magician, the dead student's uncle, who is determined to help Jana investigate his nephew's death. And his help is indeed needed as Jana faces an international criminal conspiracy emanating from Europol itself.

Praise for Michael Genelin: "Plenty of misdirection and suspense. . . . In the end, we must acknowledge that we have been held spellbound by a master storyteller."--Library Journal (starred review) Prudent Jana and impetuous Sofia were best friends when they were schoolmates. One day Sofia approached a man in a car when she shouldn't have and ended up being raped by a nefarious Communist Party bigwig. Jana pursued the culprit's car, identified him, and vowed someday to bring him to justice. Now Jana is a commander in the Slovak police force and Sofia, having made her name as a reformer, is a member of Parliament. Jana has fallen in love with an upright government prosecutor and Sofia is carrying on a notorious affair with a suave, married fellow MP. One day Jana finds an enormous diamond dangling from a string fixed to the ceiling of the living room of her house. Was it put there as a present? Or, more likely, to entrap her? Where...