Roots of evil

the long version

Lucy Trent is used to having the legend of her glamorous grandmother unearthed from time to time--the infamous silent-screen actress Lucretia von Wolff, whose life ended abruptly in a bizarre double murder and suicide at the Ashwood film studios in 1952. But when a body is found in the now-derelict studios, brutalized in a macabre echo of the 50-year-old case, disturbing facts about the past begin to emerge--facts that point back to the eerie tale of the child known as Alraune. The child named after Lucretia' s most famous film. The child who may never have existed at all. In the ensuing murder investigation, Lucy is to discover the truth about her family's dark history--a history that spans the glittering concert halls of 1920s Vienna to the bleak environs of wartime Auschwitz.