The nose

"Natasha Kaplan is a giggly, overeducated thirty-something New Yorker living in London. She is married to Tim Parker, a policeman who works for the London Underground. They met when Natasha attacked a minor sex offender on the tube and shy Tim was in charge of taking her explicit statement. Natasha didn't really feel like going back to New York anyway: she was fed up with her infantile parents, famous for their avant-garde erotic films, and although she had published one mystery novel she had no idea what to do next. So she stayed with Tim." "After several years of looking after their daughter Erica, Natasha applies for the job of editor of a little Anglo-Jewish literary magazine called The Nose. 'I think you need a Jewish centrefold. You know, like in Playboy? It would definitely give your circulation a big boost,' she declares at her interview, facing a daunting assortment of twelve elderly male trustees. To her amazement, she gets the job." "She soon discovers that The Nose is a battlefield of almost mythological proportions. A mysteriously generous donation from a German sponsor triggers a chain of events which leads Natasha to investigate the past of her predecessor and the magazine's founder, the enigmatic Franz Held. She uncovers connections everywhere, even to her own mother's secret early life in Europe. History merges with the present and begins to loom over her life, tainting and incriminating in unexpected ways, reaching as far as the very people she most loves ..."--BOOK JACKET.