Gods of Deception

At age ninety-five, Judge Edward Dimock, patriarch of his family and the man who defended Alger Hiss in the famous 1950 Cold War "trial of the century," is writing his memoir at his Catskill retreat, Stanford White's fabled Hermitage. Judge Dimock is consumed with the troubling secrets he's held for over fifty years-secrets that might change American history and the lives of his entire family. Was his client guilty of spying for Stalin or not? And if guilty, did Hiss's crimes go far beyond his perjury conviction? Dimock enlists his grandson, George Altmann, a brilliant Princeton astrophysicist, in the quest for truth. George soon finds clues that point to Hiss's guilt, a series of suspicious deaths of potential witnesses, and the secrets of the Dimock family-deceptive entanglements that have ravaged the clan and the nation. In Gods of Deception, acclaimed novelist David Adams Cleveland has created a thrilling tale of espionage, a family saga, a stirring love story, and a meditation on time and memory, astrophysics and art, taking you on an unforgettable journey into the troubled human heart as well as the past-a past that is ever present, where the gods of deception await our distant call.