The Vaults — Toby Ball

A dystopian period thriller in which a chilling series of events leads three different men to join in exposing the legacy of a radical program for punishing murderers

Set in the mid-1930s, at the height of the most corrupt administration ever known in "The City" the novel opens with a mysterious duplicate file discovered deep in the Vaults -- a cavernous hall containing all of the municipal criminal justice records of the last seventy years. From here, the story follows: Arthur Puskis, the Vaults sole, hermit-like archivist, who brings an almost mystical faith to a system he believes must cohere; Frank Frings, a high-profile investigative journalist with a self-medicating reefer habit; and Ethan Poole, a socialist private eye with a penchant for blackmail. All three independently uncover evidence of something called "The Navajo Project." But the mayor, his violent henchmen, and the group of wealthy businessmen who form the mayors inner circle might have a problem with this discovery.