It is 1931. Adolf Hitler is less than two years away from becoming the dictator of Germany. But nothing is certain. He is walking a political tightrope. He is maneuvering to court the German upper class, while trying not to disavow the violence of his Stormtroopers. Then, in September of that year, his niece, twenty-two-year-old Geli Raubal, is found dead of a gunshot wound to the chest in her locked bedroom in Hitler's flat. Is it suicide, as Hitler claims, or is it something more sinister?

Avi Kreisler is a young Munich detective called to the scene on Prinzregentenplatz 16 while investigating the death of another young woman who happened to be a friend of Geli Raubal. It is hard to be an idealist in Munich, 1931, harder still to be Jewish.

Anni Leeuwenberg is a red-headed, six-foot-tall member of the German Communist Party and one of Kreisler's love interests. He has two. Charlotte 'Lotte' Leinsdorf, unlike Anni, is born into a wealthy German family whose parents are willing to marry her off to any important Nazi official. Together with Kreisler, they enter the maelstrom of a Munich spiraling out of control.

Anni's boss, Oskar Waldmann, is the publisher of Der Weg, a Communist newspaper. Max Glaser is a prosecutor bent on bringing Hitler to trial. Both enlist Kreisler in the effort to get to the truth at all costs. And what is that cost? Everything. For Germany. For Hitler. For the world. And for Avi, Anni, and Lotte.