Beat the Devils — Josh Weiss

This inventive, page-turning crime thriller, shortlisted for the Sidewise Award, with "palpable emotional depth" (New York Times Book Review) envisions a world in which the Red Scare never ended.

USA, 1958. President Joseph McCarthy sits in the White House, elected on a wave of populist xenophobia and barely�'concealed anti�'Semitism. The country is in the firm grip of McCarthy's Hueys, a secret police force evolved from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hollywood's sparkling vision of the American dream has been suppressed; its remaining talents forced to turn out endless anti�'communist propaganda.

LAPD detective Morris Baker -- a Holocaust survivor who drowns his fractured memories of the unspeakable in schnapps and work -- is called to the scene of a horrific double�'homicide. The victims are John Huston, a once�'promising but now forgotten film director, and an up�'and�'coming young journalist named Walter Cronkite. Clutched in the hand of one of the dead men is a cryptic note containing the phrase “beat the devils” followed by a single name: Baker. Did the two men die in an attack fueled by better-dead-than-red sentiment, as the Hueys are quick to conclude, or were they murdered in a cover-up designed to protect -- or even set in motion -- a secret plot connected to Baker's past?

In a country where terror grows stronger by the day, and paranoia rises unchecked, Baker is determined to find justice for two men who raised their voices in a time when free speech comes at the ultimate cost. In the course of his investigation, Baker stumbles into a conspiracy that reaches deep into the halls of power and uncovers a secret that could destroy the City of Angels -- and the American ideal itself.