The Dead Don't Bleed

by David Krugler

Overview

Washington D.C., 1945. Victory in the war looms, but a new fear transfixes the wartime capital. Fear of communist spies and the atomic secrets they covet. When the corpse of a Navy Intelligence officer is found on a cobblestone back alley, Lt. Voigt is called in to investigate. It’s his first murder, but in the plot that he quickly begins unraveling, it won’t be his last. Pursuing crosses and double-crosses, Voigt goes undercover and the fragments he discovers (a defecting German physicist, a top secret lab in New Mexico, and Uranium-235) suggest something far larger than the usual spy v. spy shenanigans. Soon enough he’s in a race to identify the killer, to keep the bomb away from the Russians—and to keep ahead of his own secrets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681771830
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	06/14/2016
Series:	Ellis Voigt Thrillers , #1
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

David Krugler is a historian and novelist. His works of nonfiction include books on government propaganda, Cold War civil defense, and racial conflict in the United States. He is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, where he has taught since completing his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/11/2016
History professor Krugler (1919, the Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back) makes his triumphant fiction debut with a whodunit set in 1945 Washington, D.C. Lt. Ellis Voigt, an investigator for the Office of Naval Intelligence’s Sabotage, Espionage, and Counterterrorism section, investigates the murder of a colleague, Logan Skerrill, who was found shot to death in a back alley. Before his death, Skerrill was looking into the background of some new employees of the Soviet Union’s trading company in the U.S., but his work was (atypically for him) subpar. He gave the new hires a clean bill of health despite evidence that they were Russian spies. Might Skerrill may have been a blackmail victim? When Voigt finds that the dead man frequented a news-clipping service suspected of Communist affiliations, he’s sent there, undercover, to try to land a job. After being hired, Voigt looks for the business’s weak link and pursues the truth with no scruples about whom he will hurt along the way. The fairly clued solution will surprise most readers, though it will make perfect sense in retrospect. Agent: William Callahan, Inkwell Management. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Krugler brings expertise and authenticity to his first thriller, as well as a penetrating portrait of wartime Washington. And Voigt – a man with secrets of his own – stands out as one of the most intriguing characters in espionage fiction. Expect the unexpected in this thumping good read.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Krugler does an excellent job of evoking a Washington, DC mired in early Cold War paranoia. He paints a picture of a man with conflicting loyalties at war with himself. With an unexpected twist at the end, The Dead Don’t Bleed is a satisfying thriller I can easily imagine on the big screen.”

Historical Novels Review

A good old-fashioned spy novel. The action is fast paced and the mystery is gorgeously wrought and splendidly opaque. Read The Dead Don’t Bleed for a thrill-packed ride with a truly stunning ending.

Dayton Daily News

Krugler’s portrait of wartime Washington, particularly the rivalries within ONI and the enmity between the FBI and ONI, is thoroughly absorbing.

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