Quirky Sleuths. Big Murders. Very Bad Alibis.
In 1947, records investigator Thomas Halek works in a world where a name in the wrong book can cost someone a house, a family, or an identity. When Father Luka Petrovic is found dead inside the archive room of a parish in a contested postwar border town, local authorities see a burglary gone wrong and a convenient suspect: Anja Ravel, a former wartime courier who threatened to make the parish register speak.
Thomas believes registers already speak. Most people simply prefer what they say on the first reading.
One death entry changes ink halfway through a line. The first portion was written before Father Luka died. The rest was completed later by someone imitating his hand. As Thomas follows altered deaths, reassigned children, property transfers, missing names, and records shaped by whoever survived with power, the investigation becomes larger than one murdered priest. History may be written by the victors. Thomas Halek is interested in the corrections.
