In the summer of 1940 Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, sends a young Studio lawyer, Nolan Carson, to Nazi Germany to meet with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister and the head of the German film industry. Learning of this, the Austrian - now MGM - actress, Hedy Lamarr, implores Carson to arrange the rescue of a close friend and fellow actress, Helga Bohlen, whom Goebbels has placed under house arrest in Berlin. Carson goes first to Occupied France where he is drawn into the decadent high life of le tout Paris, as well as a murky universe of dissident German officers and British spies, one of whom recruits him to obtain certain information vital to Britain's survival. Once in Berlin he becomes enmeshed in that city's deceptively alluring film world before finding himself an unwitting pawn in a deadly power struggle between Hermann Gvring, Hitler's chief deputy, and Reinhard Heydrich, the sinister head of the Gestapo. This even as he's attempting to discover Hitler's war plans and free Helga Bohlen from Goebbels's clutches. The novel moves fluently from life among Hollywood stars to the all-night parties of the Parisian beau monde and the corrupt and dangerous world of German filmdom and Nazi hierarchs. Along the way three fascinating women enter Carson's life: a charming American journalist with a past, a seductive and courageous Hungarian actress, and not least, the enigmatic Helga Bohlen.

This is not only a gripping tale of international intrigue and adventure; it is also a vivid recreation of a turbulent and frightening era.