The Last Klimt

by John M. Bushby

Summer of 1945. Europe in ruins. Stealthily, the human vermin begin to slip from their lairs. Soviet spies, war criminals bent on escape, Haganah operatives, thieves, the profiteers and the con-artists join in the chaos.In Zurich, American intelligence agent Harry Braham picks up the trail of a renegade turncoat bent on making a fortune from art looted by his Nazi friends. Rather than stop the trade in stolen art, Braham’s bosses want him to befriend the man and convince him to send some of his Nazi cronies back into Soviet-occupied Europe as double agents.Back in the States, moves are afoot to close down America’s overseas intelligence services. Once again, Braham finds himself operating alone against familiar adversaries. From Berlin to Moscow to the slopes of the Alps danger stalks everyone in the quest for The Last Klimt.

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 5, 2019

About the author

Author John Bushby was introduced to the film noire genre while in grade school. From watching grainy black and white films on an antique Philco television he began to satiate his taste for the genre by reading everything he could find. Dashiell Hamett, Eric Ambler, Le Carre, Len Deighton, Sax Rohmer, Alan Furst, Philip Kerr and David Downing all have shown him the way of the craft. Bushby has drawn on the experience of over thirty years of global business experience, traveling in and out of Europe and Asia to set the background for his books.
His characters come from the people he has met along the way. Heroes and villains are drawn from casual and close acquaintances, often a mixture of both. His prime interest in writing is to ask the question of what would someone do in a situation where life or death might hang in the balance? The period that fascinates him the most are the years leading up to the Second World War. Looking back from where we are now it is easy to see all the steps that led up to that catastrophe. But living then, with the lens of one’s life to observe the world how would a person act? Just as we today cannot foretell the future or even the next minute, the men and women in the 1930s and 1940s had only their own experience and view of the world to guide them.
In The Warszaw Express Bushby draws on his experience as a pilot and Naval Flight Officer to describe the lure of flying and the feeling of being in combat. His creation of Harry Braham comes from a distillation of family members caught up in the two world wars.
Bushby lives in Flanders, New Jersey. He is now working on the next in the Harry Braham series of novels. You can learn more at his website; www.johnbushby.com