Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, ambitious, debonair Maurice Swift engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with famed novelist Erich Ackermann. Ingratiating himself with the older man, Swift teases out of Ackermann a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Using the information to write a successful novel, Swift moves from the AmalfiCoast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London. Swift hones his talent for deceit and manipulation in his cold-blooded climb to the top, but in this novel by the author of The Heart's Invisible Furies and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the higher this suave con man climbs, the further he has to fall.