Death duty

by Stephen Kimball

Kate Verdi is working for the U.S. State Department as a death officer, assigned to deal with the deaths of Americans abroad. It's not the ideal job for an ambitious young woman who wants to ride the fast track in the Foreign Service, but it's a start. The paperwork ends suddenly when master diplomat Kendall Holmes steps into Kate's office and relieves her of two complicated cases - and promotes her into the Circle, a select group of the department's best and brightest. It seems too good to be true. It is. Despite her new job, Kate can't abandon her suspicions about two deaths she left behind: that of a female Foreign Service officer in a luxury hotel in Beijing, and another of a high-ranking State Department official on the meanest streets of Washington, D.C. Kate's questions lead to vague answers and bureaucratic runarounds, and she begins to suspect an elegant cover-up has taken place. Running through a labyrinth of lies, Kate realizes her own life is in danger, and she turns to the