The prequel to David Downing's bestselling Station series introduces us to John Russell, an Englishman with a political past who must keep his head down as the Nazis solidify their power Germany, 1933. The world is not yet at war, but the influence of the Nazi party is spreading like wildfire through Berlin. The Reichstag parliament building has burned down, just four weeks after Hitler's appointment as German Chancellor. The torching will be used to justify a totalitarian Nazi crackdown. John Russell's recent separation from his wife threatens his right to reside in Germany and any meaningful relationship with his six-year-old son, Paul. He has just secured work as a crime reporter for a Berlin newspaper, and three of the stories with which he becomes involved-the gruesome murder of a rent boy, the apparently accidental running over of a professional genealogist, the suspicious disappearance of a Nazi-supporting celebrity fortune-teller-may not look alike in any way, but seem to be connected. All these investigations carry the risk of Russell's falling foul of the authorities at a time when rule of law has completely vanished and the Nazis are running scores of pop-up detention centers, complete with torture chambers, in every corner of Berlin.