- On 20 July 1944, Adolf Hitler narrowly escaped death when an assassin"s bomb failed to kill him. The conspirators, among them Axel von Gottberg, were hunted down and hanged from meat-hooks, and their executions were filmed. Sixty years later, Conrad Senior is left a legacy of von Gottberg"s papers and letters and becomes obsessed with what they reveal and with finding the film of those brutal executions. Award-winning writer Justin Cartwright has conjured a masterwork that addresses the nature of friendship and what it means to be human, and it is a remarkable tapestry of passion, ideas, frailty and courage.