Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, two teenage girls are brutally murdered and a third kidnapped in Eden Highlands, a quiet, close-knit Southern California community north of San Diego. Jack Sothern, a discredited, down-on-his-luck freelance writer, connects the crimes to Dan Boone, the notorious American "Turncoat Rebel" who found fame and fortune behind the Iron Curtain, and to a long-missing diary kept by sociopath Erich Mielke, sadistic head of East Germany's Ministry of State Security, the dreaded Stasi, and. If found, the diary's mother lode of state secrets would bring millions in a bidding war among countries. Deals are struck, treachery substitutes for the truth and the body count rises in a non-stop series of revelations as Sothern races to locate the diary, save the kidnapped girl and redeem his honor.