Amber Blood

Author's email: amber-blood@hotmail.com AMBER BLOOD, a romantic historical thriller by Mirna Pierce. (Amber Blood is a novel within a parallel novel.) Mysterious American diplomat, Peter King, arrives in Vienna, Austria, and sets a trap to catch the Nazi criminal who had destroyed his aristocratic mother during World War II. But it is Angie, half American, half Austrian, a divorcee with a young daughter, who must escape the clutches of the Nazi criminal. Never having paid for his cruelty, the Nazi has become fabulously wealthy through organized criminal activities in South America and has now returned to Vienna to claim the secret treasure he had stolen during the war. Peter's final encounter with the Nazi he has been looking for all his life brings shocking revelations. THE BACK COVER OF THE BOOK READS AS FOLLOWS: When a mysterious American diplomat is interested in pretty divorcee Angie Brown's antique shop and in the brutal murder of her Spanish diplomat ex-husband, Angie's failed marriage and her grandfather's Nazi SS connections rise up to haunt her. Angie's Mississippian background fits in with her desire to live as an American ex-patriot in her mother's country, Austria, where her nine-year-old daughter and the antique shop her grandfather left her become the center of her life. Then she meets Peter King, and her loneliness becomes unbearable. But Peter has reasons to distrust and even hate Angie. Over all of that hovers the memory of the priceless Amber Room, lost during World War II while in Nazi hands. *** AMBER BLOOD: What follows is an annotated list of MAIN FICTIONAL AND HISTORICAL CHARACTERS in this historical thriller. A. MAIN FICTIONAL CHARACTERS - 1992 IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA. 1.Angel "Angie" Brown is a pretty 35-year-old divorcee with a 9-year-old daughter, Silke. (Angie's father is Mississippian, a history professor, and her divorced mother, Trudi, is Austrian.) Angie inherited an antique shop in Vienna from her Austrian grandfather, ironically a soldier on the German side in WWII. 2.Peter King, mysterious American diplomat, is interested in a bejeweled amber clock Angie received from her Spanish diplomat ex-husband, Manuel, shortly before Manuel is brutally murdered. B. MAIN FICTIONAL CHARACTERS IN THE PAST. 3.Jessica Singer, Krakow, Poland, thriving Kazimierz, 1906. Beautiful young member of the Jewish community years before WWI. 4.Count Karl Hoerner, 1906, heir of replica of the legendary Amber Room. (A true-life replica is near St. Petersburg, Russia.) 5.Halina "Ala" Hoerner-Koenig, heiress of Count (Graf) Karl, his twenty-eight-year-old daughter (unknown to her until just before WWII, also child of Jessica Singer). Ala is the loveliest wealthy aristocrat in Austria in 1935. 6.Gregor Koenig, Count (Graf) von Bruckfeld; his wife is Ala. 7.Kurt Koenig, son of Gregor by his abusive first wife. Kurt is the main villain, first 15 (in 1935) then 23, then elderly. 8.Heinz Ziegler, Kurt's best friend. Both youths join the Schutzstaffel, Hitler's SS bodyguards turned hateful race guardians, both darlings of SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler. C. HISTORICAL CHARACTERS ACTIVE IN THE FICTIONAL PLOT. 9.Nazi SS Captain Joseph Mengele, M.D., aka the Angel of Death. Infamous for his so-called medical experiments in death camps Auschwitz-Birkenau near Krakow, he is a friend of Kurt's. 10.Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuehrer, Head of the SS. Kurt is his closest, potentially richest and favorite protege. ***