City of Ghosts

Kelli Stanley
Works of: Fiction
Publisher(s): Minotaur (Macmillan)

Summer, 1940. France has fallen. Alone and isolated, only England stands in the way of Hitler.

Erstwhile escort, former Spanish Civil War nurse and now jaded private eye, Miranda Corbie takes on any and all cases to earn enough money to possibly buy passage to England … a country now under siege from the Blitzkrieg. When she recovers a socialite’s priceless jade parure—and collects a fat fee—Miranda is that much closer to her goal, finding a woman she barely remembers … her own mother.

When James MacLeod—the mysterious U.S. State Department agent who helped Miranda secure her license—shows up to collect on the debt, the promised reward takes her even closer: a possible five thousand dollars and a ticket on a ship to the United Kingdom.

The job? Spy on a University of California professor who may or may not be selling secrets to the Nazis and the Reds.

Miranda accepts the offer. And when the trail leads to art collection and art definition—to “degenerate” art and Mexican art galleries and a Picasso canvass—she warms to the espionage work, all the while dogging the mystery of her own childhood.

But then her socialite client turns up dead. Garroted. And another murder follows …

From the gilded brocade of the Nazi Consulate to Finocchio’s florid drag show, Miranda follows the trail of killers and spies and art collectors, men who will stop at nothing to own beauty. On the City of San Francisco—Art Deco streamliner heading for Chicago—she finds herself trapped in another kind of masterwork—when she’s framed for a murder she never saw coming …

CITY OF GHOSTS is a book as driven by character as it is by suspense, a novel that asks tough questions of the past that have yet to be answered in the present. Join Miranda on her journey. Noir will never be the same.

“…atmospheric …captivating …full of evocative detail (the scent of Hills Brothers Coffee, the sound of Artie Shaw’s ‘Frenesi’), CITY OF GHOSTS has the vigor and pace of a terrific Warner Bros. film noir.

This complex tale is set in that unsettling time before the U.S. entered World War II. It was also a time, though, of common cause and the counting of blessings. Ms. Stanley brings 1940 San Francisco to life in flamboyant language, reminiscent at times of such period prose-poets as radio’s Norman Corwin and Bay Area newspaperman Herb Caen: ‘Lying city, dying city, Lazarus and the phoenix. Wide open and proud of it, a city built on stolen sand and abandoned ships. . . . A city made by dreamers who died paupers and paupers who lived like kings.’

Miranda Corbie exemplifies her tough but beautiful town’s dualistic nature. To the idealistic State Department agent, she toasts: ‘To making a difference.’ To a dubious client, she says: ‘Bring cash . . . Checks bounce.’”

Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal

“Stanley’s affection for San Francisco establishes a strong sense of place and time in CITY OF GHOSTS. It is, Miranda muses, ‘A city made by dreamers who died paupers and paupers who lived like kings, dreams keeping them alive in the only way that mattered.’
The author’s clear-eyed view of San Francisco and of Miranda’s character adds to the strength of the novel’s engrossing historical fiction.”

Oline Cogdill, Associated Press

“…a darkly beautiful work, one of the best to be published so far this year…. [Stanley’s wordcraft] is of a quality that is unique among the current crop of mystery and thriller authors.”

Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter