Max O’Brien is in a race against time … and someone else’s past is catching up with him. Max O’Brien may be a professional con man, but that doesn’t mean you can’t count on him in a bind. So when he hears that his old friend Kevin Dandurand is a wanted man over a seemingly racially motivated killing spree, he heads to Bucharest to try to make sense of what looks like an impossible situation. The buried truths he uncovers reach back to the Second World War, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and an entanglement between a Roma man and a German woman whose echoes pursue O’Brien and Dandurand into the present day. But if they can’t escape the long shadows of the past, the two will find their present cut all too short. A serious story told with a light touch ― the lively dialogue and characterizations counterbalance the weighty subject matter ― that should appeal to most historical-mystery readers. ― Booklist Displaying a lively curiosity for Romanian history and contemporary life in Bucharest, Bolduc weaves seemingly disparate plot threads into a twisted yet coherent yarn. ― Kirkus Reviews Will appeal to readers who like to have their history lessons wrapped in a good yarn. ― Publishers Weekly A first-class thriller novel ― Mystery Tribune A deftly crafted and riveting read from first page to last, The Roma Plot reveals author Mario Bolduc as a gifted novelist with a genuine flair for narrative-driven storytelling that offers the reader a consistently entertaining and unpredictable plot of unexpected twists and turns. ― Midwest Book Review Screenwriter Mario Bolduc has written three novels featuring Max O’Brien, originally published in French. The Kashmir Trap starts the series and Tsiganes ( The Roma Plot ) won the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Book in French. Mario lives in Montreal. Born in Montreal, Jacob has translated or collaborated in the translation of a number of works, including Hysteric, The Last Genêt , and The Weariness of the Self . In 2012, he won the JI Segal Translation Prize for his translation of A Pinch of Time . He splits his time between Montreal and Asia. Max O’Brien had headed straight to the Intercontinental Hotel to drop his bags off after coming in from New York City. An hour later he was off to wander through ― and lose himself in ― the streets of the Lipscani District, a maze of lanes filled with Bucharest’s citizens out for a bit of Christmas shopping. At some point he burst out of the maze of small commercial streets and onto Unirii Boulevard in front of the Palace of the Parliament. The sheer monstrosity of the monument startled him. Like a wedding cake with its top layer missing, crushing the capital around it, it was one of the largest buildings in the world. The dream of a megalomaniac tyrant, Nicolae Ceauşescu. The People’s House ― though the people themselves had renamed it the People’s Madhouse. Around it, the Civic Centre, built over the ruins of a nineteenth-century neighbourhood. Twelve churches, two synagogues, and three monasteries, not to mention hundred of homes and shops, had been razed to build it. The destruction of a district twice as large as Le Marais in Paris. The Civic Centre was a city within the city, the place the dictator had ruled from to the end of his life. After the revolution in 1989, Romanians took over construction of the palace, which now housed the Parliament and various ministries. And yet it felt unfinished, as if it couldn’t ever be completed. Max kept on walking. He had a meeting on the other side of the fountain, near the pond that ran along the boulevard. The past forty-eight hours had been dizzying. Max had learned from a newspaper in New York that the Romanian police were looking for his friend Kevin Dandurand in relation to the murder of twenty-three Roma. Max had tried in vain to get in touch with Kevin’s wife, Caroline, in Montreal. So he’d called Gabrielle, their daughter, who’d been living with her father since the couple had split. Kevin taught physical education at Collège Notre-Dame du Sacré-Coeur, but, according to the teenager, who’d been shocked by the news, Kevin had been on sabbatical since September. He’d been hiking the Appalachian Trail by himself. The trail ran from Maine to Georgia, the hike of a lifetime for an experienced outdoorsman. He could only be reached through email. And what about Caroline, what was happening with her? Gabrielle had explained that she’d locked herself in her house, refusing to answer the phone after being hounded by journalists following the accusations levied by the Romanian police. Max had written a long email to Kevin, demanding an explanation, and left his cellphone number. Gabrielle had done the same thing ― several times ― earlier that very same day. As one might expect, Kevin hadn’t answered a single one of her messages. Gabrielle told Max that Josée, Kevin’s half-sister who worked as a lawyer in Paris, was already packing her bags for