Stel­la Berg­er, for­mer dar­ling of stage and cin­e­ma in Weimar Ger­many and of late an out­spo­ken crit­ic of the Nazi regime, is found stran­gled in her dress­ing room in the mid­dle of a tri­umphal run on Broad­way. Assist­ing in the police search for the killer is Misia Safran, a young Jew­ish refugee who traces Stella’s life from her hum­ble begin­nings in a Vien­nese Jew­ish ghet­to to her rise to star­dom and inter­na­tion­al fame. Misia must cut through the thick­et of self – serv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from the peo­ple around the star. Could veiled hints at a close­ly – guard­ed secret in Stella’s past imper­il the image of her pub­lic per­sona but pro­vide the clue to solv­ing the crime? From the avant – garde cof­fee­house cul­ture of pre­war Vien­na to the cabaret milieu of 1920s Berlin and sub­se­quent­ly to exile in war – time New York, Death of a Diva takes the read­er on a cul­tur­al whirl­wind tour as its char­ac­ters flee across the con­ti­nent to escape Nazi persecution.