In the early ’70s, an orthopedic surgeon of Iraqi descent completes a medical tour of duty in Vietnam. Honorably discharged, he returns home to join the staff of Columbia University Medical Center. In another part of the campus, an associate professor lectures in an auditorium packed with political science students. The Jewish educator spent her preteen years living in the West Bank of Palestine. After her parents were slaughtered by Arab soldiers, she was adopted by a rich uncle and raised in America.

Nine hundred miles to the west, an auburn-hair Brit with a royal bloodline and impeccable med-school credentials begins her residency in a Chicago VA hospital. Recovering from severe battle wounds, a Jewish, US Army lieutenant lies in one of her wards and dreams about going to an Ivy League law school.

Strange bedfellows? Apparently not. A half century later, the two pairs are married and sharing adjoining mailboxes.

Our Move is set in the present and is the third of seven novels that continues a story of espionage, murder, and convenient alliances. It’s a snowy, Midwest morning in an affluent village outside Chicago. Patricia Shaver, an heiress to a banking fortune and an investigative reporter, is at home listening to her best friend go on and on about a funeral she just attended.

Pat isn’t acquainted with the deceased, a British ocular surgeon with a royal lineage or her husband, a Harvard-educated attorney who is the consigliere of the Chicago Mafia. Likewise, she’s never met the honorary pallbearers, a Mediterranean-skinned orthopedic sawbones or his Israeli wife, an ex- Columbia professor. Her indifference changes days later. The death of the mob attorney arouses Pat’s curiosity when the local police look into the matter, then allow the FBI and CIA to label the second murder as a suicide.

Suspecting a cover-up, Pat enlists her best friend, but after she and Donna make discreet inquiries, their investigation is discredited by officialdom. Realizing her options are nonexistent, Pat tables her journalistic standards and tacitly endorses vigilante justice by seeking help from a man who’s not afraid to trample constitutional guarantees.

Do the ends justify the means? Pat is disturbed by the crime boss’s methods but even more appalled by the discoveries they make. Before the Christmas week is over, she and the mobster infuriate worldwide officialdom as they begin to understand how the four neighbors figure into an espionage scheme designed to recreate a new world order.