Imagine an alternate history in which the United States fails to enter World War II in time to help the Allies defeat the Tripartite before Germany becomes too strong to defeat. Imagine a future in which Germany has perfected genetic engineering and is systematically eradicating whole nations in an effort to secure the empire Hitler vowed would last a thousand years; a future in which Hitler lies in a cryogenic chamber, awaiting treatment for a cancer for which a cure has been discovered. Imagine a future in which a faction of genetically engineered people, opposed to Hitler's tyranny, choose to travel back in time to amend future history by influencing Churchill to withhold from U.S. Intelligence the vital decrypt specifying the date and time of the raid on Pearl Harbor. Imagine a fast-talking private investigator from the Bronx named Joe January who uncovers the seemingly impossible plot by grudgingly agreeing to help a pretty young woman locate her missing father--a Professor of Archeology from Columbia College who must prevent the secret of Hitler's location from falling into the wrong hands...Imagine all of the above and you have the ingredients for my novel One Hot January. Populated with characters fictional as well as factual, the plot is based on the premise that Winston Churchill did indeed withhold such a decrypt from U.S. Intelligence--a decrypt that many believe lies locked away in a box, to remain unopened for seventy-five years. Hitler's detractors from the future believe that by allowing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to take place, President Roosevelt would have no choice but to declare war, without the support of Congress, or else incur the outrage of the American public. To declare war openly would prevent Germany from developing the atomic bomb first, thereby becoming too strong for the Allies to defeat. One Hot January takes into account the theory of what many historians have long suspected: a plot to draw the U.S. into World War II.By the end of One Hot January, January is transported one hundred years into the future where, in the sequel, January's Thaw, he must survive by his century-old sagacity in our modern world.
