Countdown to Cambridge

October 1942. As America fights a war overseas, a different kind of battle brews in the heartland.

Charles Jones, a meticulous accountant at one of Indianapolis's grandest department stores, expects nothing more dangerous than balancing ledgers. But when a routine audit uncovers irregularities-vast sums siphoned off and hidden behind a false account-he discovers a conspiracy far more sinister than theft.

He learns that his employer, Heinrich Dorner, is a Nazi sympathizer. And the stolen money isn't for personal gain-it's financing an assassination plot aimed at a brilliant American scientist working at Harvard's Cruft Laboratory in Cambridge. To buy time, Charles fakes his own death and hides out in an abandoned funeral home.

Charles is joined by unlikely allies: his cousin Ralph, a local funeral director; Arthur, a mild-mannered accountant; the store owner's estranged son, Edward; Hiram Alonzo Boswell, a private investigator from West Point, Indiana; and Ed Halverson, a hard-nosed Indianapolis police sergeant. Together they follow a trail of deception from quiet Midwestern offices to the ivy-covered corridors of Harvard, racing against time to expose the plot before it strikes.

The closer Charles gets to the truth, the more he realizes that the war's deadliest front may not be in Europe, but right here at home.