DEATH KNELL

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 1977

Nazi-hunting goes reincarnative as Russell and Janet Roth of Atlanta ask the parental question: ""Why couldn't Pamela be interested in sex, like any normal fourteen-year-old girl?"" What genius-IQ, somber Pamela is interested in is WW II atrocities, and she's been secretly amassing a library-level collection of photos, clippings, books, and SS memorabilia. Tetchy Janet trembles, afraid that the collection will upset German-born, hidden-past Russell, afraid that Pamela's occasional unexplained absences might have something to do with those headlines about torture-murders of ex-Nazis. And Janet's old psychiatrist-professor, Nazi-hunter Otto Ebenstein, instead of comforting her, starts trailing Pamela, and Janet starts trailing Pamela, and gun-toting Russell starts trailing. . . But, of course, Pamela isn't Pamela at all--it's concentration-camp victim Erika Krajewski using Pamela's body for beyond-the-grave revenge, with guess-whose-Nazi-Daddy as the final, exorcising executionee. Cline seems to be trying to outdo the distastefulness of Damon (1975), draping his explorative notion in purple, speckling his Dick-and-Jane sentences with words like ""hues"" and ""hewn,"" and dictating such off-the-cuff Mom-to-daughter remarks as, ""But without me, you face a form of punitive submission you've never known before."" Foul, most foul, with none of the compensatory flair of the comparable Boys from Brazil--but there's an audience for the possessed and an audience for the Holocaust, and Cline (and a six-figure Fawcett paperback sale) must be figuring that somewhere those circles will intersect.

Pub Date: Aug. 4, 1977

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1977

Categories: FICTION