Available from Amazon.com, click here to purchase

 “Reminiscent of Dragnet . . . with the color and ambiance of Chinatown . . .  historical fiction that expertly renders its setting.”   --- Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Coit Tower

“A riveting murder mystery that takes you into a time and place that is both familiar and strikingly different from today. Set in the months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Coit Tower unflinchingly captures the zeitgeist of 1940s San Francisco.”

 – Barbara Berglund Sokolov, author of Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1906

“In early 1942 San Francisco was a city on the precipice. As residents mobilized for war in the Pacific, elites and activists battled one another for power at home. Coit Tower’s gripping story of a North Beach murder and its investigation takes readers on a panoramic tour of this city at war. Filled with evocative, surprising details of everyday life in 1940s San Francisco, Coit Tower transports readers back to a moment when clashing values and interests threatened to topple the city’s old order.”

 – Christopher Lowen Agee, author of The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972

“Bill Issel has given us the best San Francisco novel in a decade. Filled with political intrigue, interesting characters, and a mesmerizing story line, this is the novel all fans of "the cool grey city" have been awaiting for a long time.”

 – Rodger C. Birt, author of Envisioning the City: Photography in the History of San Francisco

“A suspenseful murder mystery and a highly effective evocation of San Francisco four months after the US entered World War II.”

 – Robert W. Cherny, author of Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art

“It was a delight to read this novel. I didn’t want to put it down. I loved all the historical detail and depth and felt I was in the city at that time. The characters are well developed; Ruthie is a really strong and complex character.”  

 – Rochelle Gatlin, author of American Women Since 1945

 “A real thriller, with lots of twists and turns and a great sense of wartime San Francisco and its issues.”

 – Zeese Papanikolos, author of Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre

Cover photograph: Library Mural, Coit Tower, by Bernard Zakheim (1934), 

photo by Joe Crawford, accessed from Wikimedia Commons, April 14, 2019. 

Reused according to Creative Commons license 2.0. 

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode