In this sequel to COPYCAT, Detective Mickey Ryan finds himself embroiled in a mystery that dates back to World War II when his wife takes her great-uncle, Moshe Rosenthal, to an exhibition of famous artwork recovered by the Monuments Men at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Moshe suffers a heart attack when he spots a man he thought he would never see again — the notorious “Butcher of Auschwitz”, but how is it that he has not aged in over half a century?
With help from his retired partner, Joe Kowalski, Mickey finds out that the man Moshe saw is actually the son of the murderous SS officer Moshe had known when he was a prisoner at Auschwitz and the son looks just like him. Joe has a hunch that leads him to the heart of Amish country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he locates the infamous “Butcher”, Werner Schmidt, now living under the assumed name, Warren Smith. Joe discovers that Schmidt has never accepted the fall of the Third Reich and now he is leading a neo-Nazi organization with thousands of members right here in the United States. Although, Werner is old and unable to carry out the missions to ensure the rebirth of Nazism, he has raised his son, Eric, to believe in Nazi ideology and provided him with intensive military training to carry out missions for the new Party.
Since the end of the war, Werner has tried relentlessly to track down some missing diamonds he heard about before the Nazis pulled out of Auschwitz. He learns that there were two families of diamond dealers from Amsterdam who were sent to Auschwitz and a few survived to immigrate to America where they reestablished their diamond businesses. The Rosenthals were one of the two families and now it is up to Eric to find the missing diamonds. Among them is the famous Regents Diamond which dates back to the French Court and was last known to be owned by Napoleon and worth millions.
Eric’s search leads him to Buffalo where Moshe Rosenthal is recuperating from his heart attack in his great-niece’s home. When Werner discovers that Mickey’s daughter, Miriam, has been compiling records of his war crimes to present them before the International Criminal Court at the Hague and have him arrested for his horrific war crimes, he and his wife go into hiding.
Eric breaks into Mickey’s home in his desperate search for the missing diamonds and fails. Mickey tells his captain at the Amherst Police Department the entire story and enlists the help of the department with officers standing guard at his house, but even that cannot stop Eric. Mickey must protect his family and his home and only then does he learn the true purpose of the Nazis’ obsession with the diamonds.
Where it is available: Amazon
Rebecca Cale Camhi, Writer 