An eerie, detailed alternate history serves as the backdrop for this otherwise conventional crime thriller. The setting is Berlin, 1964, some 20 years after the Third Reich's victory in WW II. Germany and the U.S., the world's two superpowers, find themselves in a cold war resulting from a nuclear stalemate; but U.S. President Joseph P. Kennedy is soon to visit Berlin for an historic summit meeting with Hitler, clearing the way for detente. Meanwhile, cynical police detective Xavier March investigates the drowning of Josef Buhler, former state secretary in the General Government. When the Gestapo takes over the case -- ruling it suicide -- March continues his investigation at the risk of his life, uncovering a deadly conspiracy at the highest levels of the Reich. With the help of American reporter Charlotte Maguire, he finds hard evidence of the wartime extermination of Europe's Jews, a secret that Buhler and his colleagues have been murdered to protect. Of course March and Maguire fall in love along the way. Harris (Selling Hitler) generates little suspense in this tale beyond his piecemeal rendering of the novel's unusual historical setting. The characters are flat and the plot largely predictable. And readers may well question the taste of using the Holocaust as the point of departure for a rather insubstantial, derivative thriller.

The year is 1964. The setting is Berlin. JFK's father, Joe Kennedy, is president. Edward VIII is king, Wallis his queen. Adolf Hitler is about to celebrate his 75th birthday. In this thriller with a twist, the stalemate which ended World War II has evolved into a cold war, not between the Soviet Union and the United States, but between the Third Reich and America. Police investigator Xavier March handles a case involving the death of a prominent Nazi, an apparent suicide. The trail leads to other suicides, accidental deaths, a numbered vault in Zurich, and a beautiful American reporter. March discovers the pattern behind the deaths and locates incriminating papers exposing the Holocaust, which, because Germany didn't lose the war, has been kept secret for 20 years. Harris, author of the nonfiction title Selling Hitler ( LJ 5/15/86), is clearly well versed in the operations and machinations of the Nazi regime. He uses this knowledge to create a realistic and frightening world in which we all could be living. Recommended.
-- C. Christopher Pavek, National Economic Research Associates Library, Washington, D.C.

There are no happy novels set in Berlin, but Harris (Selling Hitler, 1986, on the diaries forgery) has managed a novel that dances on Hitler's grave with amusing success.

Naturally, the whole book is entirely depressing, depression being the keynote of Hitlerian fantasias; its leading tones were struck earlier by Orwell's 1984 and le Carr‚'s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Harris's novel is set in 1964—Germany has won WW II, and this is the weekend of Hitler's 75th birthday, with huge celebrations ready to blow. After defeating Russia, Germany has formed a European trading bloc with 12 Western nations; German is the second language in all schools; everyone drives German cars, watches German TV, and so on. Switzerland alone is neutral, afloat on the Wehrmacht's stalemate in its cold war with the US. Tying in with Hitler's birthday is the announcement that—to reinforce detente between the two countries—US President Joseph P. Kennedy has been invited to Berlin. But that detente is threatened by the murders of two retired high officials, and Xavier March, homicide investigator with the Berlin Kriminalpolizei, lands the job of tracking down the killers. March is divorced and disaffected, and his ten-year-old son hates him for not being a super-Nazi like himself. Just as March is getting ahead in the case, he is taken off it by Globus, a top pig in the Gestapo. But March is too far in to stop. And he's fallen in with the beautiful American journalist "Charlie" Maguire, a smart and feisty woman who's always ready to prick March's Nazi chauvinism. The big secret: March has stumbled on the great Nazi coverup of the gas chambers, with ghastly proofs of it hidden in a numbered Swiss account.

Farsighted readers know that massive dystopian evil such as Winston Smith faced in 1984 can provide no happy end. But only a Schweinehund wouldn't like this springtime for Hitler, with its waltzes through the Holocaust to the tunes of Lehr's The Merry Widow.

"A writer who handles suspense like a literary Alfred Hitchcock."
—Nelson Mandela
 
"Robert Harris has recreated the whole structure of a totally corrupt society in a way that makes the flesh creep."
—John Mortimer
 
"Power and chilling... convincing in every detail."
—Martha Gellhorn
 
"Gripping in the way John Buchan, Len Deighton and John LeCarré are. The writing is superb."
—Woodrow Wyatt

The year is 1964. Nazi Germany has won WWII, Hitler is alive and well, and Joseph P. Kennedy is president of the United States. Berlin detective Xavier March enters this mad world to investigate a drowning and instead finds murder, suspicion, and a terrifying secret. The listener is thrust into the plot from the start. There’s no back-story, no explanations--just satisfying intimacy and immediacy, as in film noir. This BBC Radio 4 full-cast production truly creates an audio movie, saturated with spot-on sound effects. The trains, the cheap cigarettes, and the cold drizzle surround you. Excellent on the ears and provocative in the "what ifs" of alternate history. B.P. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine