A catastrophe on a mountain in Transylvania sends toxic cyanide hurtling through rivers and streams, destroying an ecosystem and killing hundreds. As the impact of the mining breach stretches beyond the country’s borders, it ensnares Farrar and Clio, a couple living on another continent, who begin to understand that their business interests are intertwined with enterprises more sinister than they’d realized. Fearing the wrath of Peter Zugravi, a criminal with international reach, Farrar sends Clio and their daughter Sydney to a remote island where he hopes Zugravi will never find them. It’s here that Clio finally unlocks the family secrets and the mysterious origins of her family’s wealth. With characteristically razor-sharp prose, Margaret Sweatman mines the dark caverns of global capitalism in this new addition to the resource “noir” canon. Intense, visceral, and agile, Night Birds is an all-absorbing thriller, whose morally complex characters are called upon to reckon with the power than runs beneath their feet and the consequences of their own complicity.
