Riley Fitzhugh, former Hollywood private detective turned US Navy lieutenant, is recruited by the OSS for temporary duty as a naval spy in Morocco during the planning for Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. Riley’s assignment is to kidnap a French river pilot and extract him from Casablanca.

Along the way, Riley meets an old flame from his days in Hollywood. She’s an English aristocrat who may or may not be a German agent or an Allied double. Together with an employee of the US Consulate in Morocco—a lapsed Russian rabbi—they spirit the pilot out of French Morocco to Tangier. But some surprises are waiting for all of them in the end.

Terry Mort is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Michigan, where he received an MA in English and began working on his PhD. After grad school, he served as an officer in the US Navy. Deployed to Southeast Asia, he saw a variety of action there. Mort has written four nonfiction histories that were extensively reviewed in the national press and widely praised. He has also written several novels, one of which, The Monet Murders (McBooks Press), introduces the character of Riley Fitzhugh, Hollywood private investigator.