GI Ben Collier comes to Hollywood in 1945 to make a documentary about the concentration camps. The son of a filmmaker executed by the Nazis, Ben, who has ties to Continental Pictures as well as the German émigré community, is ideal for the project. His task is immediately complicated, however, when his brother falls from an apartment window. Ben soon learns that he had Communist sympathies and might have been murdered. But was he working for or against a grandstanding, Red-baiting congressman? To uncover the truth, Ben will have to untangle his family’s murky past. With his usual mastery of historical milieus and the subtleties of complex characters, Kanon (Alibi) immerses the reader in the glamour of Hollywood just before it comes under investigation. VERDICT While not as engrossing as some of Kanon's earlier efforts (e.g., Los Alamos), especially for those without a healthy background knowledge of the peiriod, this ambitious novel is for anyone interested in Hollywood in the late 1940s or the film industry’s response to the era’s congressional witch hunts.