The Ruins

In the sprawling debut novel from biographer Wick (The Long Night), former POW Paul Beirne unearths an insidious conspiracy on Long Island. One night in 1954, an unidentified man is killed and thrown onto railway tracks in Lindenhurst, N.Y. The same night, a local woman is brutally dismembered and her husband dies under suspicious circumstances. Paul, who became Lindenhurst’s chief of police after returning from WWII, teams up with his friend, Holocaust survivor Doc Liebmann, to investigate. Soon, the pair uncover a German spy ring that has been operating in the area since the 1930s. When word of the discovery reaches Lindenhurst’s corrupt mayor, he fires Paul, who continues investigating in secret. The ring of Nazi sympathizers turns out to be connected to the long ago disappearance of Paul’s mother, the wartime theft of blueprints for the Norden bombsight, and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Wick’s wide-screen ambition leads to some uneven pacing, with plot points packed so tight it undermines suspense, and Doc Liebmann’s historical philosophizing can be heavy-handed. Still, the action brims with fascinating insight about the Nazis’ presence in the U.S. and the shifting cultural climate of the 1950s. It’s a memorable, if imperfect, historical thriller. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Feb.)