City of Masks: Blumenthal's thriller of spies in Shanghai.

A book premiere in English: W. Michael Blumenthal, founding director of the Jewish Museum Berlin and former U.S. Treasury Secretary, presents his second novel, "City of Masks". The fast-paced thriller is set in Shanghai during the Second World War and is about con men, gangsters and spies. At its centre is Paul Obermann, a fugitive from an insurance-fraud charge who is recruited as a spy by the OSS and must rescue a failed mission together with Steffi, a Holocaust survivor. Blumenthal himself lived in Shanghai for eight years as a refugee from the Nazi dictatorship.