According to an article published in The New Yorker 16 years ago, a German repository captured by the Allies at the end of World War II contained roughly 75 million pages of files. Nazi Party membership cards, SS personnel files and various correspondences filled massive halls within the Berlin Document Center. The United States retained possession of these documents for nearly 50 years, the article reports, only relinquishing them to the German government in 1994.

The story in The New Yorker stuck with local author Toby Ball for many years. He was particularly intrigued by the complex methods the Nazis used to store such vast quantities of information. The original documents adhered to a rigid filing system that American analysts labored to unravel. For instance, all Hitler’s personal notations were written in green ink.

“Part of the work of these specialists was to be able to interpret different things that went along with these records,” Ball said.

Before returning the documents to Germany, the Americans archived all the material on microfilm, but some components of the original files were lost. Hitler’s green ink, for example, was indistinguishable on microfilm from other colors.

Those German files, and the metadata that went along with them, helped inspire Ball’s debut novel “The Vaults,” which he’ll officially unveil at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth on Tuesday, Sept. 14. What if, the book posits, physical files were manipulated to alter the past?

The book is set in the mid 1930s in an unnamed city rife with corruption. All the municipality’s court records are filed in the Vaults, a vast underground warehouse overseen by a reclusive and fastidious archivist named Arthur Puskis. It has taken Puskis years to master the intricate filing system used to maintain order, and he performs his daily duties with a diligence that borders on obsession.

When a mysterious duplicate file turns up, Puskis is relentlessly driven to find the source of the error. His seemingly innocuous discovery leads him on the path to uncovering a conspiracy that encompasses numerous facets of the city’s inner workings, including its menacing mayor and several of its wealthiest businessmen.

A renowned investigative journalist named Frank Frings and an ethically-challenged private detective named Ethan Poole have independently stumbled upon the same thread. But exposing the city’s dirty secrets could have violent repercussion for all three men.

Ball, who lives in Durham, said his premise for the central character of Puskis came partly from imagining a person navigating the immense passageways within the Berlin Document Center.

“I just had this idea in my mind of this sort of crabbed older guy going down this endless hall surrounded by files,” he said. “It’s just this visual that was the start of his character.”

In the character of Frings, a steadfast critic of the city mayor, Ball attempted to manifest the idea of a “journalist as being kind of a celebrity and having very strong feelings politically and socially that he’s trying to get across.” Frings also has a daily marijuana habit and dates a famous jazz singer.

With Poole, who supplements his living as a private snoop with illicit blackmails, Ball has created “a more conventional detective character, but a guy who’s a little bit on the sleazy side.” Poole is troubled by his own corruptibility and, with help from his socialist girlfriend, is trying to do right in his life.

The third-person narrative jumps between these three disparate personalities through more than 100 chapters, each only a few pages long. The novel reads like a classic noir film, complete with violent gangsters, sinister politicians, socialist union strikers, seedy jazz clubs and nefarious crimes. It’s a compelling and suspenseful mystery that unfolds bit by bit, with partial reveals gradually accumulating to produce a full picture.

“I enjoy the sort of noir aspects of things,” Ball said. “I was trying to play a little bit with some of the roles that are played in noir movies and novels.”

Ball has already received considerable press on his debut novel, and he looks forward to reading in front of a live audience at RiverRun.
“Public speaking is not something I’ve done a ton of, and it’ll be funny having a roomful of my friends out there,” he said.

Born in Washington, D.C., Ball grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., where he attended Trinity College. He moved to Dover in 1997 and earned a master’s in education from the University of New Hampshire. He now lives in Durham with his wife and two children, ages 5 and 13. He works as a business manager at the Crimes against Children Research Center and the Family Research Laboratory at UNH.

Ball started writing fiction about 12 years ago, initially as a hobby. After completing “The Vaults,” he signed a two-book contract with St. Martin’s Press (a deal he landed with help from his editor and agent). He’s already completed the second book, a sequel to “The Vaults,” which is currently being copyedited. He’s now at work on a third installment, rounding out a full trilogy.

The novel illustrates an era long before the computer age, when quantities of information that now occupy a single flash drive filled entire buildings.

“Now, especially on the Web, you can have one record and you can access it from numerous different directions,” Ball said. “But back in the ’30s, or even back in the ’70s, it was such a linear filing system for information that you had to figure out, where am I going to put this physical folder?”

But many of the novel’s thematic elements remain prevalent around the globe—including widespread poverty, flawed political machines, and the conflict between labor and management. The files on those real issues are still being written.

Toby Ball will read from “The Vaults” at 7 p.m. on Sept. 14 at RiverRun Bookstore, 20 Congress St., Portsmouth, 603-431-2100. He’ll also be at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter on Oct. 26 at 7 p.m. and Durham Public Library on Oct. 27 at 7 p.m.