Orphan, Agent, Prima, Pawn is the perfect historical novel: a story that could be told in no other era or place, with the most ruthless characters. Inventive as Elizabeth Kiem is, I wish she could conjure a time machine, too. Her sophisticated book is exactly what I craved as a teenager, rich with romance, risk, political intrigue, caviar, high art, forbidden rock and roll, and one tough, stunning heroine, already marked by history.