Madam and the Spymaster

"Historians Brunner and Jones, along with journalist Schrammel, present the story of a brothel in wartime Berlin, "Salon Kitty," run by Kitty Schmidt, an elusive madam."--Booklist
"After sundown, at a respectable address in Berlin, Nazi libertines went in and out of Salon Kitty, a brothel that was an illicit little toast to the Weimar years. Inside, a single mother from Hamburg popped corks for Hitler's minions and adversaries alike. The S.S. used the louche environment to spy on Kitty's besotted patrons, through mikes in the upholstery and clerks in the basement. The transcripts are lost to time, and we can't be sure whether the sex workers even knew about the side hustle. But the authors of The Madam and the Spymaster listen carefully, sorting through eight years of echoes."

--Air Mail

"Journalists Brenner, Nigel Jones, and Julia Schrammel focus on Heinrich Himmler's spymaster Reinhard Heydrich, who, in 1939, opened a high-end brothel in Berlin and bugged its bedrooms and parlors to capture the pillow talk of its influential clients. A successful madam, Kitty Schmidt, was tapped to run it. The client list included Gian Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law, but just as interesting to Heydrich were German notables. In the vicious world of Nazi Germany, with seven intelligence services vying for dominance, Heydrich was looking for an edge: blackmail was an effective weapon."--Library Journal