In the fall of 1941, two years into World War II, British journalist John Russell is still living in Berlin with his fourteen-year-old son, Paul, and his longtime girlfriend, Effi, a German movie star. One of a handful of much-censored foreign journalists,

Russell is investigating a story that he can’t publish from inside Germany: What’s happening to the Berlin Jews who are being shipped east? His search for the answer brings him into proximity with the local communist underground and involves him in a celebrity murder.