Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

Christopher Marlowe Cobb (Kit), the swashbuckling early 20th-century American newspaper war correspondent, travels to Mexico in April and May of 1914, during that country's civil war and the American invasion of Vera Cruz. But covering the war in enemy territory and in sweltering heat isn't enough of a challenge for Cobb. Soon, he's falling in love with a young Mexican laundress, Luisa, who may not be as innocent as she seems, and he's witnessing the inexplicable attempted sniper assassination of a priest (miraculously, the bullet rebounds off the cross around his neck, leaving him unharmed). Now Cobb is also trying to track down a sniperand figure out why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from ammunition ships docked in the port. An exciting tale of intrigue and espionage, Butler's powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed.

The first World War is underway; Germany has allied with the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish caliphs have declared jihad on the British Empire. Meanwhile, U. S. President Woodrow Wilson hesitates to enter the fray. Aboard the passenger liner Lusitania, war correspondent and American spy Kit Cobb has been assigned to shadow a German intellectual and possible covert agent who is believed to have information vital to the war effort. During the voyage Cobb is smitten with famed actress Selene Bourgani, who inexplicably seems to be working for the Germans. Cobb soon realizes this simple actress is anything but, as she harbors secrets that could pour gasoline on a world already in flames. From the doomed voyage of the Lusitania to the darkest corners of London to the powder keg that is Istanbul, Cobb must venture deep behind enemy lines and use all the cunning in his possession to uncover Bourgani's true motives.

It is 1917, and the United States is still wavering on the brink of war. At an elite intelligence meeting at a Hyde Park mansion, Kit's handlers pair him up with someone he would never have expected--his mother. There's a German mole somewhere in the British government, and the most likely suspect happens to be a diehard fan of the famous American theater actress Isabel Cobb. Disguised as a German-American reporter named Joseph William Hunter, Kit follows his mother and her escort Sir Albert Stockman from the relative safety of London into the lion's den of Berlin. This third installment in Butler's critically-acclaimed series features the swash-buckling action, charismatic leading man, and artful prose that have won the hearts of historical crime fiction fans everywhere.

With Paris in the Dark, Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler returns to his lauded Christopher Marlowe Cobb series and proves once again that he can combine storytelling craft with unmistakably literary underpinnings. Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches-though that hasn't stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher "Kit" Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the U.S. government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them-possibly a German operative who has snuck in with the waves of refugees coming in from the provinces and across the border in Belgium. But there are elements in this pursuit that will test Kit Cobb, in all his roles, to the very limits of his principles, wits, and talents for survival. Fleetly plotted but engaging with political and cultural issues that deeply resonate today, Paris in the Dark is this series' best novel yet.