Publisher's Weekly
Though the prose is flat and the dialogue often tedious, Wallace (The Chapman Report, The Man) transforms a bizarre and incredible situation into the linchpins for a convoluted ''spi-fi'' thriller. Eminent Oxford don Sir Harrison Ashcroft, on the verge of proving that Hitler did not die in the bunker, is murdered in Berlin. His daughter, Emily, continues this quest. Her life is endangered but she has new and unexpected protectors: Rex Foster, researching the vainglory of Nazi architecture; Nicholas Kirvov, curator of a Soviet art museum; and Tovah Levine, Mossad agent. The four prove a tough match for a coterie of neo-Nazis conspiring to perpetuate Hitler's image and obscure the details of his death. The true story of Hitler's last hours is revealed in counterpoint by Eva Braun, who has indeed survived. Now known as Evelyn Hoffmann, she has another secret: she and der Fuhrer had a child. Having created this situation, however, Wallace fails to exploit its explosive consequences, and the narrative sputters out without making much of an impact.
Library Journal
The possibility that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not commit suicide in 1945, but rather survived to perpetuate the Third Reich into modern times, has long intrigued historians and novelists alike. In this taut, fast-paced novel, the evidence rests on a Hitler-style painting of a building not constructed until 1952, a blueprint of an enormous underground bunker supposedly built by slave laborers in the final days of the war, and the activities of an elderly German woman called ''The Merry Widow,'' reputed to be Braun herself. The plot is Wallace at his best, as the line between fact and fiction blurs, and the reader begins to believe. Marcia R. Hoffman, M.L.S., American Hoechst Corp., Somerville, N.J.
Genre: Mystery
Though the prose is flat and the dialogue often tedious, Wallace (The Chapman Report, The Man) transforms a bizarre and incredible situation into the linchpins for a convoluted ''spi-fi'' thriller. Eminent Oxford don Sir Harrison Ashcroft, on the verge of proving that Hitler did not die in the bunker, is murdered in Berlin. His daughter, Emily, continues this quest. Her life is endangered but she has new and unexpected protectors: Rex Foster, researching the vainglory of Nazi architecture; Nicholas Kirvov, curator of a Soviet art museum; and Tovah Levine, Mossad agent. The four prove a tough match for a coterie of neo-Nazis conspiring to perpetuate Hitler's image and obscure the details of his death. The true story of Hitler's last hours is revealed in counterpoint by Eva Braun, who has indeed survived. Now known as Evelyn Hoffmann, she has another secret: she and der Fuhrer had a child. Having created this situation, however, Wallace fails to exploit its explosive consequences, and the narrative sputters out without making much of an impact.
Library Journal
The possibility that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun did not commit suicide in 1945, but rather survived to perpetuate the Third Reich into modern times, has long intrigued historians and novelists alike. In this taut, fast-paced novel, the evidence rests on a Hitler-style painting of a building not constructed until 1952, a blueprint of an enormous underground bunker supposedly built by slave laborers in the final days of the war, and the activities of an elderly German woman called ''The Merry Widow,'' reputed to be Braun herself. The plot is Wallace at his best, as the line between fact and fiction blurs, and the reader begins to believe. Marcia R. Hoffman, M.L.S., American Hoechst Corp., Somerville, N.J.
Genre: Mystery
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