SPAWN

by Robert Holles ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 14, 1978

Another Hitler gimmick: during the Thirties, Dr. Heinrich Buechner develops a special fluid and deep-freeze method for keeping sperm potent indefinitely. He has, in fact, tested six-year-old sperm on drug-ridden Jewesses in concentration camps. When Berlin starts falling, Der FÃœhrer tells Dr. B. that he wants his sperm frozen so that his genes will carry on after his body's death; he's thinking of a Fourth Reich. Thirty years later, whadyaknow but Marianne Seal of Essex is having a fertility problem: is she infertile or is her American lover Nick sterile? He's a rather boorish, boozey writer, but they've been trying to have a child. When they go to the Grasspool Clinic and Health Center, little do they suspect that Nick's life is about over or that Marianne's womb is about to become the incubator of--well, the hopes of a Nazi awakening. An Israel hit squad, made up of Jewish-American secret service agents on loan, is onto the neo-Nazis and has its own interest in destroying the Hitlerian embryo. The chase leads to a deserted island in the Outer Hebrides, then to the United States, and a climax that is a low-class variant on Household's Rogue Male. Ira Levin could have done nice, taut things with this trickery--in fact, he pretty much did, in Boys from Brazil--but Holles drowns the possibilities in busy melodrama.

Pub Date: July 14, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978

Categories: FICTION