Edgar–nominated author Paul Levine, who is best known for his legal thrillers featuring linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter, is back with an exciting new series. With the first installment, MIDNIGHT BURNING, he impressively integrates Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, and Adolf Hitler’s henchman, Joseph Goebbels, into fact-based fiction.

It’s spring 1937. Brandishing Nazi swastika emblems, the German airship the Hindenburg glides over New York City. In Los Angeles, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI agents myopically ferret out suspected communists while fascists establish a network of antisemitic and racist paramilitary goons to annihilate key Hollywood filmmakers and actors, including Chaplin. Meanwhile, “the Tramp” cobbles together a Hitler spoof, The Great Dictator, his first “talkie” film. “The world is a dangerous place, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

"Aside from Einstein, the genius in this book is Paul Levine, who uses real people and true events to weave an intricate thriller tapestry...[in] a tale that has more plot turns than a spiral staircase."

This book throngs with notable characters, including Charles Lindbergh, William Randolph Hearst and Douglas Fairbanks. Georgia Ann Robinson, the LAPD’s first Black female police officer, features prominently with “the Genius and the Tramp” as she aids them to glean information from officers who are as “crooked as a corkscrew.” She learns that “the path for trailblazers ran through a jungle of vipers.” Researching events nearly a century ago to prepare the story’s timeline surely was a herculean task.

“[S]taring into the heart of darkness,” Einstein and Chaplin trek to Rustic Canyon, a rural area near Santa Monica in the 1930s, where 200 machine guns and unfathomable amounts of ammunition were shipped to a ranch. That’s enough firepower to rid California’s entire squirrel population. Why else would a rancher need such an arsenal? The dynamic duo employs Einstein’s cunning and Chaplin’s acrobatic antics to achieve a genius solution to a predicament.

Levine incorporates a humorous exchange between the key characters at the premiere of Chaplin’s 1931 silent film, City Lights. Einstein to Chaplin: “You don’t say a word, yet the world understands you.” Chaplin to Einstein: “The whole world admires you, even though nobody understands a word of what you say.”

Aside from Einstein, the genius in this book is Paul Levine, who uses real people and true events to weave an intricate thriller tapestry. Some characters and scenes are fictional, and timelines blur to enhance a tale that has more plot turns than a spiral staircase.

Reviewer’s note: An intriguing parallel read is Lerone A. Martin’s THE GOSPEL OF J. EDGAR HOOVER: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism. On the Acknowledgements page of MIDNIGHT BURNING, Levine praises “the indefatigable efforts of ace agent Kimberley Cameron” and Bookreporter.com’s “marketing dynamo Carol Fitzgerald.” You rock, Carol!