First, as always, enormous thanks to my agent, Laura Macdougall, who is responsible for my writing career and to whom I am permanently grateful. Second, profuse thanks to Olivia Davies, who shepherded me through moments of crisis, then made sure I was happy with the results. Thanks also to Chelsey Emmelhainz, who gave me some of the soundest writing advice I’ve received, and to Julian Isaacs, who provided invaluable guidance on the (literal) ins and outs of heroin usage, as well as rock ’n’ roll anecdotes that impressed and cheered me when I was down. And many thanks to James Bock, who had the unenviable task of editing me and performed it with grace and perspicacity.
Thanks to Andy Peers, my first listener; Jennifer Piddington, my first reader; Ashley Bruce, my weekly supporter, and Kirsty Martin, my soothing and relaxing confidant. I give special thanks to and for Stephen Dineen, the very first person to introduce me to strangers as “a novelist.”
Even more than usual, this book wouldn’t have been possible without Google Maps and Google Street View. In pandemic times, these made it possible for me to walk the streets of Paris. And thanks to the Paris France Hôtel, which I stayed in on the brief research trip I was able to manage before COVID changed everything. It was the first time I stayed in a hotel on a research trip, and I felt classy.
The art market in France during and after World War II is a complex and difficult subject, one that’s still being unraveled today. For help understanding it, I used Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (Basic Books, 1997); Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford University Press, 2001); “Art Life in Occupied France, 1940–1944,” Modern Art Consulting; Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). Any inaccuracies in this book are mine, not theirs.
Rachel’s puzzling over the morality and worth of bringing ancient Nazis to trial are my own, as is the great-uncle. It’s a topic I’ve long wrestled with, and in the writing of this book I had some help from Elizabeth Kolbert’s article “The Last Trial: A Great-Grandmother, Auschwitz, and the Arc of Justice,” in the New Yorker’s February 16, 2015, issue; Eva Mozes Kor, “‘Bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ guilty of accessory to 300,000 murders” (https://
In the more mundane but integral area of private detection, particularly private detection on the web, I used Kevin Beaver, Hacking for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, 2018); Jean-Emmanuel Derny and Samuel Mathis, Les Detective Privés pour les nuls (Editions First, 2016). I also consulted Benjamin Sobieck’s The Writers Guide to Weapons (Writer’s Digest Books, 2015), and Eugene Vidocq’s Memoirs of Vidocq (Whittaker, 1859). To understand, at least to a degree, the cut-throat world of fashion design, I consulted Fashionary: The Fashion Business Manual (Fashionary, 2018); Oriole Collin and Connie Karole Burks, Christian Dior (V&A, 2018); Lesley Ellis Miller, Balenciaga: Outside In (V&A, 2017); Désirée Sadek and Guillaume de Laubier, Inside Haute Couture: Behind the Scenes at the Paris Ateliers (Adams, 2016); and André Leon Talley’s absolutely riveting The Chiffon Trenches: A Memoir (Penguin Random House, 2020).
As always, I made extensive use of Pekka Saukko and Bernard Knight’s Knight’s Forensic Pathology, 3rd edition (Arnold, 2004). This terrific book has given me more hours of enjoyment than its title might suggest.