City of Ghosts
A Miranda Corbie Mystery
-
-
4.0 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
June, 1940. For Miranda Corbie, private investigator and erstwhile escort, war is on the horizon—and with it, a web of secrets, lies, and murder.
Miranda owes a debt to the man who helped her get her PI license. And now, the U.S. State Department is calling in the favor. They suspect a chemistry professor in San Francisco of being a Nazi spy. To uncover the truth, Miranda must navigate a treacherous landscape of back alleys, art galleries, and drag clubs—a journey that takes her from San Francisco to Reno on the famed City of San Francisco streamliner.
But when she finds herself framed for a murder she never anticipated, Miranda is forced to go underground. Alone and hunted, she soldiers on, determined to expose the Nazi spy and unravel the mysteries of her own troubling past. To survive, Miranda must learn to discern reality from illusion, fact from fiction, and allies from enemies as she confronts the City of Ghosts.
In Kelli Stanley's most thrilling novel yet, Miranda Corbie's return mesmerizes readers and redefines the noir genre. City of Ghosts is a taut, suspenseful mystery that blends the intrigue of a historical thriller with the grit of a hardboiled detective story—a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the final, shocking denouement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 Stanley slowly unpeels more layers of Miranda's troubled history and 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.
