The Lost Survivor

Private Investigator Hugh M. Doherty returns for the second installment in the Doherty Mystery series. It is 1959 and a member of West Warwick, Rhode Island's small Jewish community, Meir Poznanski, has gone missing. He is a concentration camp survivor who immigrated to Rhode Island from Poland after the war. A group of men from the local synagogue wish to hire PI Doherty to find their friend.

Poznanski has disappeared because he believes he has seen a man in Providence who was a member of a Nazi affiliated group in Poland that turned his family in to the Gestapo. He is now intent upon killing this man in an act of revenge for the injustices visited upon him and his family. In order to commit this act Poznanski elicits the support of a mysterious woman who is likewise a Holocaust survivor. Doherty's mission is to prevent this grievous deed from occurring.

The case causes Doherty to suffer from a crisis of conscience once he encounters the person Poznanski seeks to kill. The man is a despicable human being as well as an ex-Nazi. Doherty must wrestle with the dilemma of whether or not he should save this man's life while taking on the responsibility of preventing Poznanski from committing the crime. A war veteran himself who fought bravely against the Germans, Doherty is confronted with his own feelings about the war and its aftermath. Along the way he learns more about the Holocaust and the long lasting effects it has on those who survived it.