The latest in the Martin Bora series.

Spellbinding multi-layered crime novel set in 1944 in a demoralised Berlin, devastated by Allied bombing.

As ever Pastor astutely mingles fictional and historical figures. The July 20 plot against Hitler and its dramatic implications as never told before.

Will appeal to readers of Phillip Kerr (Bernie Gunther series) and Alan Furst (“Spies of the Balkans”) and of course to the loyal Martin Bora fans.

Berlin, July 1944, a few weeks before the attempted assassination of Hitler by Claus von Stauffenberg and other conspirators. Bora has been called back from the Italian Front to investigate the murder of a dazzling clairvoyant with Nazi connections.

Soon Bora realizes that there is much more at stake than murder in a city where everyone is talking about a conspiracy aimed at the Nazi hierarchy. Bora eventually meets with Stauffenberg. Are the plotters a group of heroes devoted to the salvation of Germany at the cost of their own lives, or a bunch of opportunists compromised from the beginning with the Nazi regime and now looking for a new virginity in the eyes of the Western Allies and Stalinist Russia?