The Informer by Craig Nova puts yet another notch on the belt of an author with an already stellar body of work that so many people have not yet been fortunate enough to discover. Currently, I am reading The Congressman's Daughter and recently, I finished his most recent novel before The Informer -- Cruisers -- and I can't help but be simultaneously addicted to the elegant restraint of his prose and the raw power with which he delves into the human soul.

In The Informer, Nova takes readers to Berlin in 1930 -- where politics are becoming increasingly polarized, the economy is in shambles, and information is constantly manipulated and distorted for individuals and groups to leverage power against one another (sound like the state of affairs in the U.S. today?)

The plot follows Armina, one of the few women working in Inspectorate A, the serious crimes division of the Berlin police department, as she traverses the dark underbelly of the city, confronting its bizarre inhabitants. As Armina investigates, she encounters Gaelle, a young prostitute with a scarred face and alluring eroticism that allows her to slip in and out of the lives of politically connected men—many corrupt, some sinister, all looking for power, money, and sex. Gaelle and her partner Felix, a boy hustler with a lame foot, know the value of a secret, and also its price, in the depraved, cosmopolitan city.

With the discovery of each new body, Armina identifies more closely with the murders, almost as if she is losing a part of herself with each crime. As she edges closer to the dangerous truth, the lines between true and false, friend and enemy, and good and evil begin to blur.

The Informer is at once startling and poignant. The characters invite you to wonder in the abysses of their souls. The setting is eerily reminiscent of that in which we live today. This book is one not to miss.