Hour of the Cat, Quinn - B

                                               This a very good historical novel and first in a trilogy about a WWI and NYPD vet who turns to private investigations as a career move in the early 1930's.  The year is now 1938 and the story is set in NYC and Berlin. The backstory is eugenics, the pseudo-science of racial defects, as practiced in America and Nazi Germany.  Forgotten by most in the US, we once led the world in the incarceration and sterilization of defective people, such as epileptics, the retarded, and mentally deficient. In a patchwork quilt of different state rules and protocols, the medical profession, with the approval of a 1927 U.S. Supreme Court case, went about their business with funding from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations.  Of course, the Germans took matters well beyond sterilization and into mass murder. What makes this novel fascinating is the author's breadth of knowledge about pre-war New York.  He can describe streets, locales, and neighborhoods with astounding detail and color. He introduces equally interesting characters.  His hero, Fintan Dunne, is an Irish veteran of the famous 69th Regiment of Joyce Kilmer, Father Duffy, and Medal of Honor winner, Col. William Donovan. I had only known of Donovan as the WWII mastermind of the OSS. I did not know about his rise from blue collar Buffalo, his ascendancy to the top of the Wall Street legal profession, or his unsuccessful run for Governor in 1932.  The Berlin portion of the story is a bit less interesting, as it details the Nazi move towards war and the rivalry between Gen. Heydrich and Adm. Canaris.  I suspect  that it will be the OSS where we find Donovan and  Dunne in the next two books.