Elaine's Literary Salon

Today at Elaine’s Literary Salon in Alexandria, VA, we are thrilled to bring back to town author Bill Rapp, who began his professional life as an academic, teaching European History at Iowa State University. A graduate of Notre Dame (B.A.), the University of Toronto (M.A.), and Vanderbilt (Ph. D.), Bill has always been particularly intrigued by German history. He says the last 35 years working for the U. S. Government has broadened his perspective to all of Europe and much of the Middle East. His career has taken him around the world, including to Berlin as the Wall fell and Germany was reunified.

Bill shares: “I may have spent the last 35 years as a diplomat/analyst working for the federal government, but I began my adult life as a professional historian. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in History and German, I received my M.A. in European History from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. I taught history at Iowa State University for one year but then decided to shift my efforts to something less settled and moved to Washington, D.C. That career has taken me to Berlin, Ottawa, Baghdad, and now London, with long stays in Washington in between.

“Through it all, I never lost my love of history and literature, especially crime fiction, which I often read to take a break from all the history books I had to study for my coursework, thesis, and dissertation. Fortunately, I was able to apply that affinity for our past throughout my career with the government, while it also inspired much of my writing. You can see that, for example, in the Berlin novels, especially Tears of Innocence, as I spent several years there as a student and later as a diplomat during the fall of the Wall and Germany’s reunification. Even the Naperville private detective series (Angel in Black, A Pale Rain, and Burning Altars) draws on the local history and development of the Chicago area, just as Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald–the two paragons of American detective fiction, in my eyes–did in their novels and stories set in southern California.

Learn more about Bill here: billrappsbooks.com

Click here to buy Bill’s books!

About Bill’s newest 2026 book: The Prague Spring: Chief of the CIA station in Prague for nearly a year, Baier has been following the Dubcek government’s efforts to reform the country’s rigid communist system and move closer to Western Europe. On a warm August night, the Soviet Army rolls into Czechoslovakia to crush the reform program and ensure the country’s subservience to the Warsaw Pact. Baier must move quickly to protect his officers, his family, and his Czechoslovak allies and assets from death and deportation by the Red Army and Soviet intelligence. At the same time, Baier must determine who his true friends are among the local officials and the foreign agents spread throughout the country’s capital. Only when he reaches the border with Austria is Baier certain whom he can trust. Even then, new surprises await.

Assignment in Saigon, published 2025: Karl Baier has been enjoying his tour on the CIA’s seventh floor as the Special Advisor for Strategic affairs, a reward of sorts for his successful mission in Turkey two years earlier. But with the intensifying and divisive debate in Washington about America’s future engagement in Vietnam, the Director sends Baier on a special mission to Saigon to prepare a report on the Agency’s assessment of the situation on the ground and the prospects for America’s growing involvement. The assignment has a specific focus and a tight deadline.But it isn’t long before Baier is drawn into a dangerous operation that has much deeper implications for the war itself and the broader global and strategic competition, of which Vietnam is only one part.

A Turkish Triangle, published 2023: CIA officer Karl Baier is sent to Turkey to uncover the reasons behind the recent deaths of three Soviet assets at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. He discovers, however, that the three deaths are only the beginning. They are part of a broader effort to change the role of the United States in Turkey and the Middle East and undermine its determination to block the Soviet plans for Cuba and beyond.

Berlin Walls, published 2021: August, 1961: CIA officer Karl Baier is back in Berlin just as the Wall is going up and the world appears to be on the brink of a new war. Baier must help a KGB defector escape East Berlin and find his brother’s killers in return for information on Moscow’s plans, but with a Soviet assassin and the East Germans on their trail-all while his wife’s parents are trying to flee East Germany.

Budapest Escape, published 2020: CIA officer Karl Baier has been running a highly-placed source in the Communist Party and Hungarian government from his post in Vienna for over a year. When he receives a warning that is source is in danger, Baier knows he will have to return to Budapest to find and rescue his agent—if he is even alive.

Despite resistance from CIA Headquarters in Washington, Baier and a colleague will have to locate the Hungarian agent, overcome his reluctance and skepticism, dodge Soviet tanks, evade Red Army patrols, escape from KGB prisons, and disobey orders from Washington as they search for a way to freedom. Along the way he will discover support and betrayal where he least expected it.

Get ready for our interview with Bill: Watch our 2025 interview (abov) at Elaine’s Literary Salon, hosted by award-winning author and restauranteur Jeffery James Higgins. And have a meal, a martini, and an inspiring author-filled evening when you attend all of the Literary Salon events at Elaine’s in Old Town Alexandria, VA: elaines-restaurant.com.