Curb Appeal: A Forgotten Object. A Buried Network. A Deadly Trash Picking Mistake.

The sculpture on the curb wasn't supposed to be worth anything.

Cleveland. 1996. Sunday afternoon.

Theo Novak is a corporate instructional designer with a deadline, a Jeep, and a habit of garbage picking on his drive home through Shaker Heights. The dark bronze sculpture sitting on the curb in front of a long Tudor Revival is a free score — beautiful in an ugly way, the kind of ugly that costs a lot.

It is.

It just isn't free.

By the end of the week, Theo will have:

• Found a brass key and a sealed envelope hidden inside the bronze.


• Watched two strangers break into his apartment in broad daylight.


• Met an FBI agent who shouldn't exist.


• Watched the woman he loves disappear into the back of a U-Haul.


• Agreed to walk into the Cleveland Museum of Art in a tailored suit and a fake name to deliver a piece of microfiche older than he is.

What's hidden in the sculpture is the seed of a Cold War operation the United States buried thirty years ago. What it's worth is more than the people who killed for it. And whoever ends up with it next will write the next thirty years of history.

Theo has nine days. He has never owned a tailored suit. He has never seen anyone die.

He is about to do both.

CURB APPEAL is Book One of The Shaker Protocol — a literary spy thriller for readers of John le Carré, Mick Herron, and Olen Steinhauer. A story about ordinary people pulled into extraordinary danger, told in a voice you'll remember long after the last page.

For fans of: Slow Horses · The Spy Who Came In from the Cold · The Tourist · Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

One sculpture. One key. One envelope. Nine days.

Pick it up.