City of Ghosts

Miranda Corbie faces challenges on both the global and personal level in Shamus Award-finalist Stanley's assured third noir featuring the tough-talking San Francisco PI (after 2011's City of Secrets). In the summer of 1940, Miranda not only receives a mysterious postcard purportedly from her long-lost mother but is also courted by the government to help sniff out a Nazi spy hiding in plain sight as an art-loving University of California chemistry professor, Dr. Huntington Jasper. She's torn between devoting all her efforts to tracking down her mother%E2%80%94Stanley slowly unpeels more layers of Miranda's troubled history%E2%80%94and helping her country. Eventually, the State Department's offer, which comes with an enticing bonus that could mean reuniting with her mother, wins out, and Miranda starts uncovering the true nature of Dr. Jasper. Along the way, corpses start popping up, and Miranda herself is even in the frame for murder. Along with her keen eye for period detail and vernacular, Stanley reminds us once again why we'd all be lucky to have Miranda Corbie in our corner. Agent: Kimberley Cameron, Kimberley Camerson & Assoc. (Aug.)