This OPAC will be unavailable for a few hours beginning 6PM on Saturday, April 20, 2024 for planned upgrades. The OPAC should be back up to regular operation Sunday, April 21, 2024.
1953. Simon Putnam, newly hired by a distinguished New York publishing firm, gets his first assignment: editing The Vixen, the Patriot and the Fanatic, a lurid bodice-ripper improbably based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. It is a potboiler intended to shore up the firm's failing finances. Simon's mother was a childhood friend of Ethel Rosenberg's; his parents mourn Ethel's death. Simon meets The Vixen author, reckless, seductive Anya Partridge, ensconced in her opium-scented boudoir in a luxury Hudson River mental asylum. Simon comes to realize that everyone is not what they seem, that everyone is keeping secrets, and that ordinary events may conceal a diabolical plot. -- adapted from jacket