Pantheon

The new high-concept thriller from the number one bestselling author of The Righteous Men, The Final Reckoning and The Chosen One. Oxford, 1940. James Quinlan, a brilliant young philosophy don, has the River Cherwell to himself. All the other men his age are at war. He suffers from a limp, the legacy of the wound he sustained fighting in the Spanish Civil War four years earlier. When he returns to the home he shares with his small son, Harry, and his wife, Barbara -- a fellow academic and former Olympic athlete -- he finds they have both disappeared. After a frantic search, he discovers that Barbara and Harry have taken up an offer from the Yale Medical School giving safe haven to members of the faculty anxious to escape the bombing in England, and have taken ship for North America. Unsatisfied with this explanation, and determined to discover the truth, James Quinlan makes his way to an America not yet at war. There he will follow a twisting path through Yale's alumni clubs and secret societies -- against the backdrop of an ever-intensifying debate over whether or not the US should join the war to stop Hitler. Intent on finding his wife and child, James stumbles upon the existence of an extraordinary plot: one that could change the entire balance of power in a volatile world. It seems that a man deemed too damaged to fight in the war must now save not only his own family, but his country too!