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The Dangers of Willful Ignorance

Jonathan Freedland’s “The Escape Artist” tells the story of Auschwitz’s horrors — and the multitudes who refused to listen.

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THE ESCAPE ARTIST: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, by Jonathan Freedland

It’s one of the first things we learn about Auschwitz, and one of the hardest to forget: that the Nazis tricked their victims before gassing them. When transports of Jews arrived for extermination — some 1 million people between 1942 and 1944 — the SS reassured their victims with promises of food and a warm shower while marching them off to the gas chamber. The perverse theater of death included a military van marked with a red cross, in which an SS “medic” ferried canisters of Zyklon B.

The Nazis weren’t playing a cruel joke or even covering their tracks. There was a logic behind this program of deception. Walter Rosenberg, an 18-year-old Slovak Jew enlisted in the commando charged with unloading the trains, figured it out. The prisoners’ obedience kept the machinery of death running smoothly, which the SS required: because the transports arrived in such quick succession, but also because the victims far outnumbered the guards. “If the Jews knew what was coming,” Jonathan Freedland writes in “The Escape Artist,” his riveting chronicle of Rosenberg’s escape from Auschwitz and subsequent effort to rally the world to action, “what sand might they be able to throw in the gears of the machine that was poised to devour them?” Even a small amount of resistance could be enough.

It’s a brilliant insight — one that Rosenberg (later known as Rudolf Vrba, the false identity he took on after his escape) was ideally positioned to reach. Most prisoners at Auschwitz were restricted to certain areas: the barracks, work sites, the square where roll was called. Rosenberg, who arrived at the camp in early 1942 from Majdanek, where he had been sent after resisting an order for Slovak Jewish men to report for “resettlement in the east,” saw it all. He worked first in the SS food store and then in various hard-labor commandos:building a factory at the satellite camp Buna; shoveling gravel in quarries; even painting skis to equip German soldiers on the eastern front.

In a stroke of luck, Rosenberg was recruited to “Kanada,” the vast storehouse of possessions plundered from the transports. His job was to pull suitcases from a gigantic pile and sort the items inside, looking for valuables. The work here was less dangerous, and the prisoners better fed: They could steal food while the guards were busy beating others. And what they were witnessing, Rosenberg came to understand, was privileged information about the camp’s operation.

What had happened to the owners of all this stuff — pots and pans, family photographs, tins of sardines, children’s toys, even diamonds concealed in tubes of toothpaste? The assortment showed they had believed the Nazi resettlement lie: they had come prepared to make a new life. But there was no sign of elderly people or children in the barracks or among the commandos; they had vanished. It is hard to recognize something that has never before existed, but Rosenberg did. He “was not only a prisoner in a concentration camp, a Lager of slave labor, but an inmate of something altogether new: a factory of death,” Freedland writes. And it was crucially important to the Nazis that no one know the truth.

If word got out, Rosenberg reasoned, the Nazis could be stopped. Jews would refuse to report for transports; the Allies would intervene. And so he set himself to the project of escaping, eventually joining the camp resistance. The penalty for failure was certain death: The SS regularly forced prisoners to watch as would-be escapees were hanged. Using the analytical powers that had already served him well, Rosenberg came up with a plan. Over Easter weekend, 1944, he and a fellow resistant, Fred Wetzler, lay in a hollow beneath a woodpile near the perimeter for three days, throwing Nazi dogs off the scent with tobacco soaked in petrol. Then they crept through the fence and trekked the 75 miles south to Slovakia.

Freedland, a columnist for the Guardian and author of thrillers, reveals many of the details of the escape in the book’s prologue. The real suspense begins afterward: not just the journey home, during which the two men relied on the courage of the Polish villagers who sheltered them, but what happened after they arrived. Like a pair of Ancient Mariners, the escapees told their horrifying tale to any official who would listen, desperate to warn the Jews of Hungary, the only major Jewish community yet to be slaughtered, that their transports would be next. With the help of Jewish leaders in a town in northern Slovakia, they composed a report of 32 single-spaced pages, complete with maps of Auschwitz showing the layout of the crematories, and set about translating and distributing it.

Tragically, few of the report’s recipients shared the authors’ sense of urgency. In a particularly appalling scene, Vrba and another escaped prisoner visit a papal envoy who remains largely unmoved by their pleas — until they tell him that the Nazis are murdering Catholics as well as Jews. The monsignor cries out in horror and faints. When he comes to, he promises to report the news to the pope. But as the weeks go by, the transports continue to roll in.

The report made its way to Walter Garrett, a British journalist working in Zurich, who broke the news of mass extermination at Auschwitz on June 24, 1944. The news reached the pages of this paper on July 3. Garrett brought the report to Allen Dulles, then a senior U.S. intelligence official, who professed to be shocked by its contents. “We must intervene immediately,” he said.

But, according to Freedland, Dulles had already received the report from a British diplomat and passed it on to Rosewell McClelland, a local representative of the newly formed War Refugee Board, commenting, “Seems more in your line.” McClelland, for his part, took four months to send the report to Washington. The head of the Office of War Information declined to publish it on the grounds that it was not credible. Yank, an official publication of the U.S. Army, called the report “too Semitic” and asked for a “less Jewish account.”

“The Escape Artist” includes harrowing details about Auschwitz that still have the power to shock. But the reactions to Vrba’s testimony by those in power — ranging from lack of interest to outright antisemitism — are nearly as horrifying. Freedland allows that Vrba’s expectations were naïve, citing the Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer, who argues that by early 1944, the Jews of Hungary already had enough information to piece together their fate. The problem, in Bauer’s view, wasn’t “inadequate publication of information so much as inadequate absorption of it”— they may have been aware of the facts, but didn’t truly understand their implications. That may well be true. Still, Vrba’s story teaches us to be aware of the human mind’s propensity to allow itself to be deceived, when confronted by facts that seem too horrible to believe.

In one particularly haunting episode, a group of deportees is lining up for selection when a truck piled with corpses crosses the railway tracks in front of them. A shudder runs through the crowd; people scream. Then the truck drives on, and the Jews on the platform compose themselves. “They concluded that it was their eyes, not their captors, that were telling lies,” Freedland writes. The next time an abyss yawns before us — whether it be in Kyiv or in Washington, D.C. — we owe it to them to stare into it.

Ruth Franklin’s next book is a biography of Anne Frank for the Yale Jewish Lives series.

THE ESCAPE ARTIST: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World | By Jonathan Freedland | Illustrated | 395 pp. | Harper | $28.99

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The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland: Shocking, deeply moving account of surviving Auschwitz

The 18-year-old rudolf vrba’s realisation that auschwitz was ‘a factory of death’ is superbly revealed.

The March of the Living at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp to honour the victims of the Holocaust, April 28th, 2022. Photograph: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty

Rudolf Vrba, the eponymous escape artist, was one of the two first Jews to escape from Auschwitz. This account of his life, based on official documents, testimonies, memoirs, letters, contemporary reports and historical accounts, is gripping, compelling, shocking and deeply moving.

Vrba’s first attempted escape, aged 17, was from his native eastern Slovakia to avoid being deported to Poland and hoping to get to London. Arrested and put in a transit camp, he escaped from that, only to be recaptured and deported to Majdanek concentration camp. Crowded cold barracks, with few beds, no sanitation, widespread dysentery, little food or water, back-breaking labour — these were camp conditions.

When 400 men were requested to volunteer for “farm work”, Vrba leaped at the chance but the “farm” they were taken to was Auschwitz. There he was branded “44070″. He knew staying fit and strong was essential, death being the alternative. Auschwitz has been described by many — some of whom were there and some of whom weren’t — but this account reaches for words such as “deranged” and “surreal” to try to describe the almost indescribable. The 18-year-old’s realisation that Auschwitz wasn’t merely a labour camp but “a factory of death” is superbly revealed.

He was determined to escape to warn Jews of their fate if taken there and to tell the world what was happening. The meticulous preparations for the escape are detailed, as is the hair-raising process (with many near-misses) itself. Incredibly, Vrba and his comrade, Fred Wetzler, made it to Slovakia, where they revealed the truth of Auschwitz. How the “Auschwitz Report” eventually reached journalist Walter Garrett, was first widely publicised in Switzerland and then reached the US and British governments, makes fascinating reading, just as those governments’ food-dragging over taking action is sad and frustrating. How the report saved the lives of the 200,000 Jews of Budapest is a convoluted story — but it did.

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Vrba finished the war fighting with Czech partisans, studied chemistry, married and divorced, fled communist Prague for London and from there to Canada and the US, and a second marriage. He became deeply involved in the prosecution of war criminals and led a full life despite experiencing further tragedy. His life might have been defined by what he had endured as a teenager, “but he was not crushed by it”.

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StarTribune

Review: 'the escape artist,' by jonathan freedland.

"The Escape Artist," Jonathan Freedland's compelling work of narrative nonfiction, tells the story of Walter Rosenberg, the first Jewish person to escape from Auschwitz. The book is divided, roughly, between what happens in Auschwitz and what happens afterward.

Rosenberg was a Slovakian Jew, arrested by the Nazis not once but twice (he escaped the first time), packed onto a train with thousands of other Jewish people and hauled off to the concentration camp Majdanek in Poland. He was there long enough to catch a last, poignant glimpse of his brother Sammy before being transferred to Auschwitz.

We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take.

His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read. Here are the almost casual brutalities of the SS men — playing football with the head of a dead prisoner, shoveling the dying onto trucks along with the dead and hauling them away to be burned, punishing a rabbi by dunking his face into raw sewage and then shooting him, opening a porthole in a gas chamber filled with screaming people in order to spit on them and then closing it again.

It was that docility that tormented Rosenberg. If the Jews only knew what they were lining up for, he believed, they would not go quietly. If the world knew what was happening here, leaders would rise up to stop it. It is excruciating to read that he was mostly wrong on both counts.

During his two years in Auschwitz, from age 17 to 19, Rosenberg vowed to escape and alert the world, and so he paid close attention, committing everything he could to memory — not just the layout of the camps and its railroads, but the number of Jews on each train car, the number of trains, the number of people herded into the gas chambers and incinerated, the tattooed numbers on prisoners' arms and what they meant.

When the Nazis began working on a new, more efficient railroad that would shuttle prisoners directly to the gas chambers, he and fellow prisoner Fred Wetzler made a plan. They hid for three days under a woodpile — three being the magic number of days the Nazis searched the camp for missing prisoners — and then they crawled out and staggered miles through the snow to freedom.

Certainly Freedland could have ended the book here, on this note of triumph. But the triumph of escape becomes complicated almost immediately. As Rosenberg (who later went by the Gentile name of Rudi Vrba ) and Wetzler tell their story, they hit resistance: disbelief, red tape, government inaction and bickering, influential people using the information for themselves but doing nothing to help others.

"Every path the report had taken had seemed to end in a hard stone wall, Rudi and Fred's testimony either suppressed or leading to no firm action," Freedland writes. "One man, a lawyer, seemed incredulous that 'civilised Germany' was, in effect, executing people without due legal process."

All, however, was not entirely for naught. The report produced by the pair eventually made its way to people who were able to stop the Nazis from wiping out the Jews of Budapest. "Their word had been doubted, it had been ignored and it had been suppressed," Freedland writes. "But now, at least, it had made the breakthrough they had longed for. Rudolf Vrba and Fred Wetzler had saved 200,000 lives."

"The Escape Artist" is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg's brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.

He understood that two things — an unwavering stream of reassuring lies, and absolute secrecy — are what allowed the Nazis to continue their crimes undeterred. Freedland sees parallels today.

"The difference between truth and lies," he writes, "can be the difference between life and death." This book can be read, like Rosenberg and Wetzler's report, as a warning to the world.

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Star Tribune.

The Escape Artist

By: Jonathan Freedland.

Publisher: Harper, 376 pages, $28.99

Freelance writer and former Star Tribune books editor Laurie Hertzel is at [email protected].

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The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland audiobook review – a remarkable tale of survival

The author reads his own account of the true story of two men who managed to flee Auschwitz

J onathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist tells the remarkable story of Rudolf Vrba, a 19-year-old prisoner at Auschwitz who, having been sent to work in “Kanada”, a store housing the luggage taken from new arrivals, began to understand the truth of their fate: they were there not to be resettled but to be murdered. Galvanised by this knowledge, he set himself a mission: to “escape and sound the alarm”.

Vrba joined forces with a childhood friend, Fred Wetzler, to create a hiding place under a pile of wood in a lumber yard in the camp’s outer compound. Having plugged the gaps with petrol-soaked tobacco to prevent guard dogs from picking up their scent, the pair hid there for three days and nights listening to the search operation. Once the hunt had been called off, they crept out from beneath the wood and made their escape.

Freedland, a Guardian journalist, whose voice will be familiar to listeners of BBC Radio 4’s The Long View, is the narrator, telling Vrba’s story with authority and solemnity. Much of his research was based on his conversations with Vrba’s first wife, Gerta, who gave Freedland a suitcase of his letters, and Vrba’s second wife and widow, Robin. Along with the audacious breakout from Auschwitz, The Escape Artist documents Vrba’s efforts to alert world leaders to the industrial scale murder being committed by the Nazis, and their shocking slowness to act. Freedland recalls the words of the philosopher Raymond Aron who, when asked about the Holocaust, reflected: “I knew but I didn’t believe it. And because I didn’t believe it, I didn’t know.”

The Escape Artist is available via Hodder & Stoughton, 11hr 47min

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The Escape Artist : Book summary and reviews of The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland

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The Escape Artist

The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

by Jonathan Freedland

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Published Oct 2022 400 pages Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion Publication Information

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Book summary.

Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the incredible story of Rudolf Vrba - the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz, a man determined to warn the world and pass on a truth too few were willing to hear - elevating him to his rightful place in the annals of World War II alongside Anne Frank, Primo Levi, and Oskar Schindler and casting a new light on the Holocaust and its aftermath.

A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust People won't believe what they can't imagine... In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to break out of Auschwitz—one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them at the end of the railway line. Against all odds, he and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen—a forensically detailed report that would eventually reach Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba—then just nineteen years old—had risked everything to deliver. Some could not believe it. Others thought it easier to keep quiet. Vrba helped save 200,000 Jewish lives—but he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man—a gifted "escape artist" who even as a teenager understand that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death, a man who deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.

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Reader reviews.

"A first-rate account of one of the few Jewish prisoners who escaped Auschwitz. Concentration camp stories make for painful reading, but British journalist and broadcaster Freedland relates a riveting tale with a fascinating protagonist...A powerful story of a true hero who deserves more recognition." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Drawing on interviews with family members and former colleagues, Freedland presents a warts-and-all portrait of Vrba, and vividly captures the horrors of Auschwitz. The result is a noteworthy contribution to the history of the Holocaust." - Publishers Weekly "Freedland, a journalist who also writes thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, is the perfect person to tell Rosenberg's story: he's got a journalist's eye for precise detail and a novelist's sense of pacing and suspense. Like Neal Bascomb's The Escape Artists (2018) and Margalit Fox's The Confidence Men (2021), this spellbinding book tells the kind of true story that, if it were the basis of a work of fiction, might be considered unbelievable." - Booklist "A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information - and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" - Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow "I thought I knew the Auschwitz story, but Freedland retells it from a fresh angle so powerfully that I read it with my heart beating fast, full of horror, rage, despair – and admiration for this potent demonstration of the stubborn resilience of the human spirit." - Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of The Girl with the Pearl Earring "Rudolf Vrba's life story not only meticulously recounts the truth, it also shows the unwillingness and inability of people to accept it. The past isn't over, and Jonathan Freedland's well-researched and compelling book is the irrefutable proof of that." - Roxane van Iperen, author of the New York Times bestselling The Sisters of Auschwitz

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Journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Freedland is a weekly columnist for the Guardian , where he edits the paper's op-ed pages and chairs its Editorial Board. He was previously the Guardian 's Washington correspondent. In 2014 he won the George Orwell Prize for Journalism. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.

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THE ESCAPE ARTIST

by Brad Meltzer ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2018

The same mixture as before: a sweeping, overplotted, overscaled account of high crimes, misdemeanors, and violent coverups...

An Army mortician teams up, sort of, with a military artist who just won’t die to thwart an obscenely shape-shifting conspiracy.

Everybody has some God-given talent. Jim Zigarowski’s is to make the dead look presentable for the families who come to view their remains at the Dover Air Force Base. When the bombing of a military plane from Alaska kills all seven aboard, Zig’s attention is drawn not to the headline victim—Librarian of Congress Nelson Rookstool, an old friend of President Orson Wallace—but to Sgt. Nola Brown, an Army artist-in-residence who years ago saved the life of 12-year-old Maggie Zigarowski, though she couldn’t prevent Zig’s daughter from dying scarcely a year later. Illegally grabbing the job of preparing Nola’s remains from the mortician assigned to the case, Zig quickly discovers that the remains aren’t Nola’s after all. His joy that Nola is still alive is tempered by the sobering realization that an awful lot of people have conspired to cover up this happy news by signing off on her death. Inevitably, the living Nola returns, determined to get to the bottom of the bombing. By that time, veteran suspenser Meltzer (co-author: The House of Secrets , 2016, etc.) has begun a series of harrowing flashbacks to Nola’s childhood and adolescence that firmly establish her as the most damaged heroine in the genre since Lisbeth Salander. Uncovering traces of a sinister scheme called Operation Bluebook, Zig and Nola work—often at cross-purposes, though not when they need to save each other’s lives—through a web of corrupt procurers, creatively armed killers, and board-certified magicians to trace and neutralize Bluebook before its resourceful conspirators can kill Zig and finish the job they bungled on Nola.

Pub Date: March 6, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-4555-5952-7

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | POLITICAL, MILITARY & TERRORISM | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

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A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

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by C.J. Box ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 28, 2015

A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...

Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series ( Stone Cold , 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.

Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.

Pub Date: July 28, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Minotaur

Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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Book Review: The Escape Artist

Who is Nola Brown?

Nola is a mystery. Nola is trouble. And Nola is supposed to be dead.

Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she’s dead. The US government confirms it.

But Jim “Zig” Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.

Zig works at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig’s daughter, Maggie, and once saved Maggie’s life. So when Zig realizes Nola is still alive, he’s determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola’s past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.

Nola is the U.S. Army’s artist-in-residence — a painter and trained soldier who rushes into battle, making art from the aftermath of war and sharing observations about wars that would otherwise go overlooked. On her last mission, Nola saw something nobody was supposed to see. It earned her an enemy unlike any other who will do whatever it takes to keep Nola quiet.

Together, Nola and Zig will either reveal a sleight of hand being played at the highest levels of power . . . or die trying to uncover the U.S. Army’s most mysterious secret — a centuries-old conspiracy that traces back through history to the greatest escape artist of all: Harry Houdini.

Meltzer also writes nonfiction books, including The First Conspiracy , about a secret plot to kill George Washington, and The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America’s 16th President — And Why It Failed . His Ordinary People Change the World children’s series features volumes titled I Am . . . various personal characteristics like “strong” or heroic, influential people like Lucille Ball, George Washington, Walt Disney, and Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name a few. Meltzer is one of only a few authors who have had books on the bestsellers list for nonfiction, advice, children’s books, and comic books.

Meltzer says that inspiration for The Escape Artist came to him from different sources. First, he learned that beginning with World War I the U.S. Army has artists-in-residence — painters who recreate scenes of conflicts and catastrophes, capturing the moments and emotions, and preserving them for history in their unique style. He also learned that a friend of magician Harry Houdini’s, John Ebert Wilkie, was named head of the U.S. Secret Service in 1928. He employed some of Houdini’s tricks to improve on the Secret Service’s surveillance efforts. And Meltzer became interested in learning more about Dover Air Force Base. Situated in Delaware, it is where the bodies soldiers and undercover operatives who are killed overseas are identified and prepared for release to their families and burial. The military’s biggest and most sensitive cases are also handled out of Dover. So, for instance, the bodies of the astronauts tragically killed in the Space Shuttle debacle were taken there, as were those of September 11 victims who died at the Pentagon. Meltzer immediately recognized “Dover is a place full of secrets.”

Somehow, after performing his usual extensive research, Meltzer cohesively melded all of those elements into a fast-paced and engrossing thriller featuring a cast of fascinating, fully developed characters.

As the story opens, a twin engine plane leased by the military takes off carrying several VIP passengers, but soon crashes. Three of the victims have the same names as some of Harry Houdini’s assistants, all of whom have been dead for at least a century. Coincidence? Nola Brown, a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army who serves as one such artist-in-residence, is believed to have also died in the crash. She was a childhood friend of Maggie Zigarowski, the daughter of Jim “Zig” or “Ziggy” Zigarowski, a forensic pathologist who works as a mortician at Dover Air Force Base. The girls were in the same Girl Scout troop and Nola actually once saved Maggie’s life.

Following the plane crash, Zig is assigned to prepare Nola’s remains. While doing so, he finds a note inside the corpse. “Nola, you were right. Keep running,” it says. The body of the young woman who perished in the crash is not that of Nola Brown, after all. So why was the dead woman identified as Nola? And where is the real Nola? Readers soon learn that she is the escape artist referenced in the title. But what is she running from? Or who? And if Nola didn’t die in the crash, who did? And why?

Zig spends most of his waking hours among the dead. Morticians like Zig are artists in their own right. He and his colleagues spend countless hours restoring the fallen so that their family members can view them one last time and say their good-byes. To Meltzer, Zig represents “real heroes, working on the best of the best and giving them peace.” In Zig, Meltzer has crafted a character who shoulders an enormous responsibility to the dead he prepares to meet their loved ones, as well as their grieving family and friends. Unlike Meltzer, he doesn’t see himself as a hero, but strives to honor the heroes who are entrusted to his care and respectfully does his utmost to ensure that they look their best one last time. Zig has experienced the greatest personal loss imaginable — the death of his own daughter, Maggie — and carries a tremendous amount of guilt about the circumstances. He is as bereft as the families he serves, missing the life he once enjoyed with his daughter, Maggie, and now ex-wife, Charmaine.

Because Zig recognizes Nola’s connection to Maggie, he is determined to learn Nola’s whereabouts and what or who she is determined to escape from. It is Zig’s fundamental nature to help — the deceased, their families, and Nola. In part because he can no longer help the beloved daughter he and Charmaine lost. What Zig doesn’t realize is that because of everything she has been through, Nola is strong, determined, self-reliant, and extremely clever and resourceful. She is also mysterious, desperate, and calculating. Perhaps it is Zig who will ultimately need help and Nola will be the one who provides it.

Meltzer has always been known for his meticulously researched, inventive and ingenious thrillers. But with The Escape Artist he has achieved a new level of storytelling excellence. Zig is a sympathetic character — a broken man who is grieving the loss of his only child and the subsequent collapse of his marriage, but trying to carry on. He is honorable and ethical, with deep appreciation and admiration for those who make the ultimate sacrifice to their country. After he finds convincing evidence that the dead woman he is preparing for burial cannot be Nola, he is determined to find out why the Army seems intent on making it appear that Nola did, in fact, die in the crash. Zig is not a trained investigator and his forays into finding answers are fraught with danger and near-misses. Meltzer believably and compelling contrasts Zig’s naivete with Nola’s cunning . . . to exquisite result. In his unique signature style, Meltzer injects colorful supporting characters into the story, along with snappy, rapid-fire dialogue and a heathy dose of humor, all of which keep the story moving forward at a breakneck pace. As always, Meltzer’s plot is nothing short of diabolical and readers will be guessing the truth right up to the last page. Because, in Meltzer’s story, the Army does indeed have a secret that can be traced all the way back to the days of Houdini. Zig and Nola are forced to work together and stay alive to follow the clues and discover the truth.

The Escape Artist is an entertaining adventure founded upon obscure trivia, actual historical events, and real locations brought to life through the style of imaginative story-telling for which Meltzer has long been known.

Excerpt from The Escape Artist

PROLOGUE Copper Center, Alaska

These were the last thirty-two seconds of her life.

As the small plane — a twin-engine CASA contracted by the military — took off from the airfield, most of the seven passengers on board were staring out their windows, thinking themselves lucky. Few people got to see this side of the world, much less the private base that the army had built out here. On maps, it didn’t exist. On Google, it was permanently blurred.

In the last row of the plane, a woman with shoulder-length black hair was convinced she was blessed, marveling at the snow-dusted tops of Alaska’s beautiful aspen trees. She loved that the roots of aspen trees often grew together, supporting each other and forming a giant organism. It was why she joined the army all those years ago: to build something stronger, with others. She got just that when she came out here to the lush wilderness.

Definitely blessed , she told herself. Then, just like that, the plane began to vibrate.

Her initial reaction was, Fix it — straighten us out . She was annoyed that the vibrations were messing up her handwriting. On the open tray table, she was trying to write a letter — a dirty note — to her fiancé, Anthony, telling him what she was planning to do to him later that evening.

Her hope was to slip it into his back pocket, Anthony being so surprised—and horny—from her traveling all the way to Fort Campbell on his birthday, he wouldn’t notice her sliding some playful fun into his pocket. And even if he did, well…Thanks to their army schedules, she and Anthony hadn’t been alone with each other in two months. He’d have no problem with a pretty girl’s hand on his ass.

The intercom cracked to life. “ Prepare for — ”

The pilot never got the words out.

The plane tilted, nose down, like it was arcing over the peak of a roller coaster. The woman with the black hair felt her stomach twist. All that was left was the final drop. Suddenly, there were anvils on her shoulders, pressing her into her seat.

Diagonally across the aisle, an Army lieutenant with buzzed red hair and triangular eyes made a face and gripped his armrests, just beginning to realize how bad it was about to get.

The woman with the black hair was Army too—a twenty-seven-year-old supply sergeant—and on those first days of her Airborne training at Fort Benning, they taught her that when it comes to a plane crash, people don’t panic. They become docile and silent. To save yourself, you need to take action.

The plane jolted, nearly knocking the pen from her hand. The pen. Her letter. She almost forgot she was writing it. She thought about Anthony, about writing a will . . . Then she replayed those last few minutes before she got on board. Oh, God. Now it made sense. Her stomach was up in her throat. The VIPs at the front of the plane were now screaming. She knew why this plane was going down. This wasn’t an accident.

Frantically, she jotted a new note, her hand shaking, tears squeezing out from behind her eyes.

The plane jolted again. A fireball of jet fuel came in through the emergency door on her left, from outside. Her shirt was on fire. She patted it out. She could smell melting plastic, yet at the sight of the flames —

The door . She was seated at the emergency exit.

Still clutching tight to the scribbled note, she gripped the door’s red handle with both hands and started to pull. It gave way, and she slid it sideways. There was a pop. The door was still closed, but the seal was broken.

Twenty seconds to go.

She tried to get out of her seat, but her seat belt — It was still buckled. In a frenzy, she clawed at it. Click. She was free.

Still holding the crumpled note, now damp in her sweaty fist, she put her palm to the exit door and gave it a shove. It was stuck from the fire. She gave it a kick. The door opened as a rodeo of wind whipped her black hair in every direction. Papers went flying through the cabin. A phone bounced against the ceiling. People were screaming, though she couldn’t make out any of it.

Fourteen seconds to go.

Outside, the tall, snow-covered aspen trees that had looked so small were now racing at her, growing larger every second. She knew the odds. When you free-fall in a light aircraft, if fate’s not on your side, you don’t have a chance.

“ GO! GET OUT !” a man’s voice shouted.

She had barely turned as the lieutenant with the triangular eyes barreled into her, fighting to get to the emergency exit.

The plane was in free fall now, a reddish orange smoke filling the cabin. Eleven seconds to go. The man was pushing against her with all his weight. They both knew if they jumped too soon—above three hundred feet—they wouldn’t survive the impact. Even if they were lucky enough to live, the compound fractures in their legs—if the bones came through their skin—it’d make them bleed out in no time.

No. This had to be timed just right.

Not until you’re at the treetops, she told herself, remembering her training and eyeing the aspens, which were closer than ever. The wind blinded her. The smoke was in her lungs as she held the lieutenant at bay with one hand and held tight to the note with her other.

“ GO! NOW! ” the man screamed, and for a moment, it looked like his back was on fire.

Eight seconds to go.

The plane plummeted diagonally toward the ground. Without even thinking about it, she stuffed the note into the one place she thought it might survive.

“ WE DON’T HAVE –! ”

Six seconds.

She put her foot on the lip of the doorway, turned back to the lieutenant, and grabbed him by his shirt, trying to pull him outside with her. This could work. She could save them both.

She was wrong.

The lieutenant pulled away. It was instinct. No one wants to be yanked from a plane. That was the end. The lieutenant with the triangular eyes would go down, literally, in flames.

With three seconds to go, the woman with black hair leapt from the plane. She would land on the balls of her feet, still trying to follow her training as she hit with a thud in the snow. A perfect landing. But also a deadly one. She’d break both legs and snap her neck on impact.

The emergency crews would find her name on the manifest. Nola Brown.

And the scribbled note — her final words — that she’d hidden so well? That would be found by the least likely person of all.

Excerpted from The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer. Copyright © 2018 Brad Meltzer. Excerpted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.

Also by brad meltzer:.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one copy of The Escape Artist free of charge from the author via Net Galley . I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own. This disclosure complies with 16 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

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The Escape Artist

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Painting a picture of intrigue

"meltzer is a master and this is his best. not since the girl with the dragon tattoo have you seen a character like this.", "one of the most memorable characters i've read in years. look out—nola’s coming. this is meltzer in peak form. ", " the escape artist is a slingshot of a novel ...[a] high stakes, high tension thriller that never lets you catch your breath.", " brad meltzer has done it again if you love twists, and tons of amazing characters, treat yourself to this gripping tale...", "this novel is like a launched torpedo ... enjoy one of the best thriller rides ever.", now in paperback.

" Meltzer is a master and this is his best. Not since  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have you seen a character like this. Get ready to meet Nola. If you’ve never tried Meltzer, this is the one. "

"The Escape Artist has a magic trick up its sleeve. Part Lisbeth Salander, part Homeland's  Carrie Matheson. One of the most memorable characters I've read in years. Look out—Nola’s coming. This is Meltzer in peak form."

"The Escape Artist is a slingshot of a novel. Brad Meltzer expertly pulls it back and lets it go, propelling the unlikeliest of heroes forward in a high stakes, high tension thriller that never lets you catch your breath. My advice: Buckle up! "

" Brad Meltzer has done it again! The Escape Artist is an exciting, cutting edge thriller you will not be able to put down. if you love twists, and tons of amazing characters, treat yourself to this gripping tale by one of the best in the business. "

"This novel is like a launched torpedo slashing through 400 pages pf deep water before reaching impact. Enjoy one of the best thriller rides ever. "

Join the Escape

Who is Nola Brown?

Nola is a mystery Nola is trouble. And Nola is supposed to be dead.

Her body was found on a plane that mysteriously fell from the sky as it left a secret military base in the Alaskan wilderness. Her commanding officer verifies she's dead. The US government confirms it. But Jim "Zig" Zigarowski has just found out the truth: Nola is still alive. And on the run.

Zig works at Dover Air Force Base, helping put to rest the bodies of those who die on top-secret missions. Nola was a childhood friend of Zig's daughter and someone who once saved his daughter's life. So when Zig realizes Nola is still alive, he's determined to find her. Yet as Zig digs into Nola's past, he learns that trouble follows Nola everywhere she goes.

Nola is the US Army's artist-in-residence-a painter and trained soldier who rushes into battle, making art from war's aftermath and sharing observations about today's wars that would otherwise go overlooked. On her last mission, Nola saw something nobody was supposed to see, earning her an enemy unlike any other, one who will do whatever it takes to keep Nola quiet.

Together, Nola and Zig will either reveal a sleight of hand being played at the highest levels of power or die trying to uncover the US Army's most mysterious secret-a centuries-old conspiracy that traces back through history to the greatest escape artist of all: Harry Houdini.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the escape artist.

Brad Meltzer is the real deal. Any author who plunders the annals of history --- in his case, U.S. government history --- is going to need to do a fair amount of research. The reason I revere Meltzer so much is that he doesn't just sit back and create clever fiction based on historical context; he himself is a participant in this history. One only needs to watch either “Decoded” or “Lost History” to find that he not just respects history, but he may very well be making history in his own way.

Meltzer has written one heck of a compelling thriller in THE ESCAPE ARTIST, which introduces readers to two unique and engaging characters. Jim "Zig" Zigarowski is a mortician who likes to dedicate his service and unique skill set to those who gave all for their country. His work is done at Dover Air Force Base, and most of his “subjects” are American heroes who had been participating in various clandestine operations.

The other character, who perhaps is the most deeply layered protagonist Meltzer has ever created, is Nola Brown, who has an interesting backstory. She initially worked for the government as an artist while also saving her real talent for the battlefield and beyond, where she was a highly skilled soldier. Nola and Zig are bound by one significant event: when she risked her life to save Zig's daughter, Maggie. Maggie may be deceased, but Zig seems to come alive when Nola enters his life in wild fashion.

This work marks Meltzer's 20th year as a published writer, and he couldn't have picked a better novel to celebrate that milestone. The term “escape artist” might call to mind famous magicians and the various tricks they have performed, the more memorable involving getting out of a life-threatening situation that would easily kill anyone else. Perhaps the most famous of these performers is Harry Houdini. There had long been talk about how Houdini may have been a spy, and you can find several works of fiction and nonfiction that explore this possibility. For the purpose of THE ESCAPE ARTIST, Meltzer uses the name Houdini as a plot device and moniker for another special character. It was a fact that John Elbert Wilkie, a friend of Houdini, was at one time in charge of the U.S. Secret Service. Meltzer indicates in a blurb that opens the novel that “it was the only time in history that a magician was in control of the Secret Service.”

"THE ESCAPE ARTIST is a treat, as are any of the great fiction and nonfiction works Meltzer has created. It may very well produce the most desired magic trick for Meltzer as he watches copies of it disappear off bookstore shelves worldwide."

While Zig may represent the moral center of the book, Nola is its heart and soul. Taking her name from New Orleans, Louisiana, she is a young woman dealing with many inner demons. The story keeps jumping back to events told chronologically from Nola's past --- specifically, the physical and mental abuse she took from an adoptive parent who mistreated her during her formative teenage years.

Zig reports to a government official with the tag Master Guns, a decorated Marine who is deeply involved in some high-level, top-secret operations all done at the behest of the President. The book’s big event, and the one that spurs the action and mystery within it, is the downing of a small aircraft in Alaska. There were only a handful of people on that flight, but some of them were very important. For instance, one of the deceased was Nelson Rookstool, head of the Library of Congress. What Zig and many others ask out loud is, “What was the head of the Library of Congress doing on that flight? Was the crash the result of foul play, and, if so, was it because of Rookstool being on board?”

The other problem is that Zig is informed that among the passengers was none other than Nola Brown. He insists on working on these bodies as he is the only one who could correctly identify that the woman thought to be Nola is not her at all. Which is not much of a surprise, since Nola is central to the story --- but it still raises many questions that require answers. In fact, Zig is quick to notice that three of the deceased shared a common trait: they all specialized, like Houdini, in the art of coming back from the dead.

With this type of roadmap and collection of intriguing characters, it is easy to imagine the fun Meltzer had in putting this tale together. As Zig begins his own investigation, one that is fairly bumbling since special ops is not his strength, he runs into many unique and potentially dangerous individuals. Perhaps the most critical person he has put in his path is the elderly magician who runs an old-fashioned magician shop in D.C. that goes by the name The Amazing Caesar. Once Zig gains Caesar's trust, he realizes that he is about to be brought “behind the curtain” into a world of political intrigue, parlor tricks and some really dangerous people.

Zig and Nola prove to be quite resilient. In fact, one character refers to Nola as “a walking Agatha Christie novel,” meaning she brings both mystery and death with her everywhere she goes. Separately, Zig and Nola are good, but together they're dynamite. Nola is already receiving the expected comparisons to Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander. I find that an unfair reference. First of all, they live in very different climates, and Nola seems to have more of a heart than the perpetually dark Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Zig and Nola need to get their hands on Houdini's infamous Blue Book that is purported to focus on the debunking of phony magicians, among other things.

Many characters in THE ESCAPE ARTIST carry monikers that have multiple meanings. I particularly like the character of Horatio, who is aptly named for Horatio G. Cook, a well-known escapist famed for being with Lincoln at Ford's Theater the night of his assassination as well as at the President's deathbed later that evening. That sounds like the setup for an episode of “Lost History”! One thing Zig and especially Nola cannot escape is their past --- and Meltzer has some terrific revelations in store for them that will cause the expected effect of readers’ heads spinning wildly on their shoulders.

THE ESCAPE ARTIST is a treat, as are any of the great fiction and nonfiction works Meltzer has created. It may very well produce the most desired magic trick for Meltzer as he watches copies of it disappear off bookstore shelves worldwide.

Reviewed by Ray Palen on March 9, 2018

The Escape Artist by Brad Meltzer

• Publication Date: September 18, 2018
• Genres: Fiction , Suspense , Thriller
• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• ISBN-10: 1538747936
• ISBN-13: 9781538747933

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The escape artist book review, highly recommended.

A relative recommended The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland in the latter months of 2022. Now I recommend it too. The book is part historical account and part biography. Throw in action in the prologue followed by flowing prose and pertinent questions, then you have a publication well worth reading.

The Escape Artist

Walter Rosenberg later known as Rudolf Vrba is the subject of The Escape Artist. He and fellow Slovakian Alfred Wetzler became the first Jewish escapees of Auschwitz/Birkenau. Their story has been told more than once. Yet, this iteration should not be missed.

First of all, Freedland has been meticulous in his research and writing. He includes maps, personal photos and documentation from no less than Sir Winston Churchill himself. And his political observations woven throughout are sound and reflective.

The account set forth will be hard to read for some. However, The Escape Artist needs to be read. Especially by younger generations. Those too young to have personally met and/or witnessed the tattoos of the survivors of the Nazi termination camps. And more importantly, by those who have forgotten their history lessons.

Rudi Vrba is the Escape Artist

Freedland addresses the man known at his death as Rudolf Vrba by his given name at birth, Walter Rosenberg, throughout the account until the man was given a new identity following his escape from Auschwitz/Birkenau. Unlike his follow escapee, Fred Wetzler, Vrba kept his new name after the war.

Much of the book is focused on the account of Vrba. However, Freedland varies in key chapters such as in London has been Informed . The differentiation gives great credibility to the account. As do the shared documents.

Vrba’s life story goes beyond survival. He truly believed his escape would save lives-if people only knew what awaited them once the cattle cars arrived at the camps. Unfortunately, he was only partially correct.

His anger extended beyond the Nazi’s. And the anger was well placed. Much, much more could have and should have been done both during and after World War II. And the lessons are still applicable today.

Jonathan Freedland

British Journalist Freedland has written both fiction and non-fiction. The latter are published in his own name while most of the former can be found under the name Sam Bourne. Additionally, he appears on BBC and contributes regularly to several publications including The Guardian. He has obviously been busy researching, writing and promoting The Escape Artist since as of today January 23, 2023, his website needs updating.

The focus on Vrba’s story is commendable. Freedland’s journalist background bodes well. He asks the right questions. Readers need to provide the conclusions. And determine future actions lest ethnic cleansing continues to succeed; on different soil and against other ethnicities. If stories such as Vrba’s are forgotten, history will repeat.

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Room Escape Artist

Well-researched, rational, and reasonably humorous.

Escape Room 66 – Inksidious [Review]

A comic strip search

Inksidious is one of the best games in Los Angeles. Here are our other recommendations for  great escape rooms in Los Angeles.

Location:   Los Angeles, CA

Date Played:   February 17, 2024

Team Size: 2-7; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 60 minutes

Price:  $35-$45 per player, depending on number of players

Ticketing:  Private

Accessibility Consideration:   One player needs to crouch

Emergency Exit Rating:  [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints:  [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

Inksidious  was nothing like what I expected, and in this case, it was a good thing. I recommend not reading too much ahead of time about this game – present review excepted, of course. The story of a missing cartoonist who has a newspaper comic strip and an approaching deadline was unique. So was puzzling in an artist’s workshop, surrounded by colors, paint, and other artsy props. But there’s more to this game – in gameplay, set design, and story – than appeared at first glance. Making these discoveries led to some entertaining wow moments.

The puzzles, mostly using locks and codes, were fun to solve and not too difficult, making this a good game for newer players. We only really struggled with one puzzle that was hard for us to see, and we made it more complicated than it needed to be. But we appreciated the humor, often subtle or quite hidden, that enhanced the lightheartedness of the experience. This game was fun and it was funny; players of any experience level will find a lot to like. A few well-placed Easter eggs even made us stop in our tracks and laugh. The final reveal provided the resolution we were looking for, though it could have been a bigger moment than it was.

It’s unusual to find a lock-heavy escape game in any city, let alone Los Angeles, that does not feel a bit dated or seem lacking. But  Inksidious  was an enjoyable, imaginative experience that didn’t need a lot of fancy tech to pull it off. If you are in the area and looking for something unique, stop in and play.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Scenery snobs
• Any experience level
• Players who don’t mind caffeinated cartoon characters
• Unique theme & story
• Creative set design
• Entertaining details

A missing cartoonist. An anxious editor needing this week’s comic strip – now! Our team had been brought in to search the cartoonist’s studio and figure out what the heck had happened. There was a deadline, after all…

We started our search in the cartoonist’s very colorful studio, with drippy paint cans on tall, metal shelves, a drafting table with a light box (handy for drawing comic strips), and paint splatters everywhere.

Escape Room 66’s Inksidious was a standard escape room with a low level of difficulty.

Gameplay revolved around observing, making connections, and puzzling.

➕ The theme was original; though the setup had us solving the disappearance of the missing cartoonist, there was a twist. As the game progressed, story and set wove together unpredictably, creating an experience that was a stark contrast to what we had first encountered.

➕ Most puzzles were approachable and quick to solve, with creative theming to mask familiar escape-room-type puzzles. This is a good game for newbies, but enthusiasts will appreciate the story and set, if not the challenge. Though this game had little-to-no tech, it was well-designed, quirky and amusing, proving that you don’t need fancy tech to have a fun escape room experience.

➖ We struggled with one puzzle that was positioned in a way that was difficult to see clearly. While we knew what we needed to do, we got it wrong several times.

➕ Humorous touches, both obvious and not-so-obvious, were fun to discover and made the game even more entertaining.

➖ The final discovery was sweet, but a bit underwhelming, given the rest of the game; it could have had more fanfare.

❓ Inksidious used color as a primary component in at least two puzzles; players who are colorblind would most likely struggle with these solves without assistance.

Tips For Visiting

• There is street parking available. Use the call box on the right side of the large brown gate and dial ESCAPE ROOM to be buzzed in .
• Restrooms are accessed by going outside, up the stairs, and down an exterior hallway.
• This game is located at Escape Room 66’s Los Angeles location, 1436 S. La Cienega Blvd., Suite 102.

Book your hour with Escape Room 66’s Inksidious , and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Escape Room 66 comped our tickets for this game.

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