The First Sacrifice

John Cooper is back. Twenty years after triggering a series of events that shattered the underground rise of the Fourth Reich, Cooper is unable to make peace with his past and has submerged himself in the old films he runs at his Boston movie house. Then a message comes from his estranged sister, Lee...a plea for help. Her only child is missing. Cooper finds the Berlin of the nineties disturbingly familiar. The threat that was hidden two decades ago is now out in the open - neo-Nazi thugs roam the streets, murdering and terrorizing their immigrant targets. But a charismatic leader has emerged to oppose the fascists and point the way to a great new Germany. He is Wolf Koller...and he is married to John Cooper's sister, Lee. But is their daughter, Erika, the victim of a kidnapping plot aimed at Wolf Koller's very public stand against the neo-Nazis, or is her disappearance connected to Erika's own idealistic and dangerous politics? Lost in a labyrinth of half-truths and veiled warnings, John Cooper's angry suspicions bring him roaring back to life - until his probing becomes a deadly threat. For a new conspiracy exists in Germany, and the stakes are higher than ever before.

Thomas Gifford was the New York Times bestselling author of The Assassini, Praetorian, The Wind Chill Factor, and The First Sacrifice. The Wind Chill Factor won Putnam's prize for best first novel. Gifford also wrote under the names Thomas Maxwell and Dana Clarins. He was a graduate of Harvard University. Gifford died in his birthplace of Dubuque, Iowa, in 2000.