Peenemunde: Windswept corner of the Third Reich and birthplace of the space age. Otto Fischer, a severely wounded Luftwaffe officer and former criminal investigator, is summoned to solve a seemingly incomprehensible case: the murder of a leading rocket engineer during a devastating air-raid. With only days until the SS assume control of the production of a remarkable new weapon, Fischer must find a motive and perpetrator from among several thousand scientists, technicians, soldiers and forced labourers. As he struggles to get the measure of a secretive, brilliant world in which imagination moves far beyond the limits of technology, what at first appears to be a solitary crime draws him into a labyrinth of conspiracy, betrayal and treason. McDermott brings skills previously honed whilst producing well-researched history books to the discipline of writing fiction, creating work that is both historically accurate and evocative as well as stylish in a literary sense. AUTHOR: James McDermott is a history enthusiast and decorated writer. His previous publications include Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer which won the Keith Matthews Prize from the Canadian Nautical Research Society, 2001; The Third Voyage of Martin Frobisher to Baffin Island, 1578 short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, 2001; England and the Spanish Armada: The Necessary Quarrel; British Military Service Tribunals, 1916 - 1918: 'Avery much abused body of men'.