The Alibi Club is the Parisian nightclub where spies, businessmen, scientists, embassy personnel and the movers and shakers in Paris congregate as the Germans are headed into Paris. The headliner is Memphis Jones, an Afro-American performer from Tennessee patterned after Josephine Baker, jazz performer and cabaret legend.

Frequenters are the members of the international law firm Sullivan and Cromwell who lose one of their budding young attorneys, Philip Stillwell, to what purports to be the results of a sordid sex affair. His lover, Sally King, a fashion model for Coco Chanel refuses to believe the obvious conclusions from the death scene and enlists Joseph Hearst, US embassy attaché, to help solve what she believes to be a murder.

Files pertaining to the firm of I.G. Farben, infamous for their work in chemical warfare during that time, are found to be missing from the law offices after the murder. This occurs as permission is given to close the office and leave Paris. The members who stay are soon to be embroiled in a conspiracy, which eventually impacts the course of the war.

Most thrillers are set within a period of history, which is pivotal, and rely upon characters that are patterned after those persons who lived in that time. Without apology and without changing the names, Mathews features extremely familiar people of the time and new insights into their personalities.

Ambassador William Bullit who served as Provisional Mayor of Paris after the Parisians surrendered the city to the Germans is the man who orders the purely fictional Hearst to investigate the Stilwell death. And weaving throughout the novel are the antics of the familiar John Foster Dulles and Allan Dulles. Also regulars at The Alibi Club are Irene and Frederic-Joliet Curie, Parisian scientists who join the central players in a web of deceit that is characteristic of the time.

Mathews creates dynamic fictional characters to balance the known characters that people her novel. The plot is fast moving, gritty and edgy as the times, with expected and unexpected twists. A fascinating adjunct of the story is the six page afterword that documents the post war careers of the principals.

And yes, Allen Dulles later founded a quiet little watering hole where gentlemen spies could gather in the heart of Washington, D.C.- roughly on the site of the present-day International Spy Museum, calling it The Alibi Club.

Mathews also writes Jane Austen mystery novels under the pseudonym of Stephanie Barron, displaying in a different forum for her penchant of historical detail. In either persona, Mathews has become a must read for mystery and thriller addicts.

--Thea Davis