Among AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019!

“Gripping and authentic…Kanon’s imagination flourishes [and] the narrative propulsion is clear. A thoroughly satisfying little bit of entertainment that extends a tentacle into some serious moral reflection.” —The New York Times Publication Review

The “expert of the genre” (The Washington Post) Joseph Kanon returns with a heart-pounding and intelligent espionage novel in regards to a Nazi war criminal who was said to be useless, the rogue CIA agent on his trail, and about The Accomplice the beautiful woman linked to them both.

Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill hasn’t forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz—nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who caused Mengele on appalling tests and who sent Max’s family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was among the many high-ranking former-Nazi officers who were able to get away Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina’s Juan Perón offered them safe harbor and new identities. With his existence nearing its end, Potential asks his nephew Aaron Wiley—an American CIA desk analyst—to complete the duty Max under no circumstances could: to locate Otto in Argentina, catch him, and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.

Unable to deny Max, Aaron travels to Buenos Aires and discovers a city where Nazis thrive in ordinary sight, mingling with Argentine high society. He ingratiates himself with Otto’s alluring but wounded little girl, whom he’s convinced is hiding her dad. Enlisting the help of a German paper reporter, an Israeli agent, and the obliging CIA place key in Buenos Aires, he hunts for Otto—a complicated monster, unexpectedly human but still capable of murder if cornered. Struggling to differentiate allies from foes, Aaron will ultimately have to discover not merely Otto, but the limitations of his own private morality, how far he is ready to head to render justice.

“With his remarkable emotional precision and mastery of tone” (Kirkus Reviews, starred evaluate), Joseph Kanon crafts another compelling and unputdownable thriller that will keep you breathlessly turning the pages.