She witnessed the greatest robbery and criminal conspiracy of all time. Now, seventy years later, she has to be silenced before the truth can be exposed.
(1888PressRelease) February 01, 2021 - April 1945 – As the war in Europe draws to a chaotic and bloody finale with the days of the Third Reich numbered, a train filled with a cargo of Nazi gold sets off from Berlin, destined for a secret location in Bavaria. On board, a young Polish Jew is about to witness a chain of events leading to the greatest robbery and criminal conspiracy of all time.
October 2018 – After more than eighty years, a Lisbon bank is about to finally shut-down its safe deposit facility. The secrets and treasures locked away for decades will soon be revealed. Influential people in powerful positions have reason to be concerned.
Fusing the two events together are the recollections of a Holocaust survivor, Rita Krakowski, condemned as a Nazi collaborator and fugitive from justice. Memories are branded into her soul like the number on her forearm, revelations with far-reaching international political and financial implications. Powerful forces are mobilised. She must be found and silenced forever.
For private investigators Chas Broadhurst and René Marchal, what appears to be a straightforward assignment rapidly becomes a race against time to find the woman before it is too late and to expose a cover-up seventy years in the making.
About the Author:
A bio of the author is available via the link www.geoff-cook.com, via the Amazon Author’s page or on BookBub or Goodreads.
Excerpt from the Book:
‘‘How do you explain your actions?’
She savoured the question before answering. ‘Have you ever needed someone and, at the same time, been needed by that someone, René?’
Memories trailed through his mind, but somehow he managed to suppress the desire to answer a question to which she wasn’t expecting a reply.
‘Some people walk through life leaning inwards,’ she went on. ‘It’s the only way they know how. Their head rests for support upon the shoulder of the person walking alongside them. It’s uncomfortable if that person is standing upright. After a while, the one doing the leaning tires or loses their balance; the one supporting becomes ever more conscious of the weight upon them. However, when the other person is also leaning inwards, the way forward is easier to negotiate. They are both exerting a similar pressure and deriving equal comfort from each other. The feeling is one of relief, not exertion. Does that make sense?’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’ And he did. Françoise had been taken away from him suddenly, just at that time of life when they could begin to relax into each other’s company beyond the demands of parentage. Their only daughter, Monique, had set her course in life; then in her final year of training to become a veterinary surgeon, a fiancée with prospects and a deposit on a terraced house in Lille. She didn’t need them; at least, until grandparenting duties came along. Marchal was to ask for a transfer out of detective work to a desk job, a ten-year wind-down before the earliest date he could retire on full pension. Françoise would cut back her locum work as a professor of philosophy at whichever Paris university was shorthanded. Together, they would do all those things career and family had precluded. There was a bucket list as long as his arm. He was so excited.
And then, one summer’s day, when the countryside and a picnic beckoned, she had a stroke so profound it left her imploring her family to help end the suffering.
Tags: The Last Rights
Geoff Cook
The drama of a Holocaust survivor spanning eighty years
Keywords: Adult Fiction; Suspense; Drama; Mystery; WW2, Holocaust survivor; Nazi; SS; concentration camp; Jew; Poland; Berlin; Ratlines; Nazi gold; Gold train; safe deposit; Italy; Argentina; Chile; Australia; Portugal; Lisbon, Portugal; Algarve; private investigators; assassin; Nazi hunter; Estoril casino; Switzerland; Vevey; Lugano;
The Last Rights by Geoff Cook is available on Kindle, as an e-book from Smashwords and other on-line retailers or in paperback from all Amazon platforms, Barnes and Noble and all major booksellers.