"Despite its reputation as a progressive and high-tech place, Seattle had a 100-year history of vice and official corruption. The system involved city official turning a blind eye to illegal gambling, unlicensed bars, and prostitution--in exchange for which police officers demanded "operating fees" in the form of cash payments from establishment owners. The money trail may have started on sordid streets but it traveled high up in official hierarchy....

On February 14, 1989, Salman Rushdie received a call from a journalist informing him that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? Writing a novel, The Satanic Verses, which was accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran." So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground for more than nine years, moving from house to house, with...