An impressive blend of literary drama and historical commentary.
In this novel, a military aide close to Hitler conspires to thwart his obsessive quest for war in Europe.
Friedrich Richard befriends Hitler while the two recover in a hospital during World War I. Years later, when Hitler becomes German chancellor, Friedrich rises too, ending up an SS general and one of the powerful leader’s closest advisers. But Friedrich eventually realizes that Hitler is an “unbalanced gambler relying on instinct and intuition” and almost certainly insane. Friedrich is horrified by Hitler’s bestial policies regarding the Jewish population in Germany and despairs over the brutal murder of his closet friend, Max Klinghofer, in a concentration camp and vows to exact revenge. In addition, Friedrich is shocked when Hitler announces his plans to annex Austria and invade Czechoslovakia, obvious preludes to a larger march across Europe. But there is hope—much of the officer corps is against a war against the powerful Czech army, which many see as suicidal. Friedrich joins a resistance group that includes other high-ranking colleagues but is stymied by the relentless fanaticism of the “Siamese twins of horror,” Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, both given intriguingly vivid depictions by Stern and Winter. The authors limn a nuanced picture of Hitler as well, that “genius…wrapped in a chrysalis of insanity,” and ably tackle the “enigma” of his bottomless antisemitism. Unfortunately, the writing can be breathlessly melodramatic—gratuitously so since the unvarnished historical record is so riveting—and the book is weighed down by a prolific stack of subplots. But the authors’ command of the relevant historical information is simply extraordinary. Further, they provide what so few novels do—an exploration of the inside of the German military under Hitler. As one of Friedrich’s co-conspirators lucidly explains, “Most professional soldiers are torn between their oath to Hitler, who is the acknowledged leader of our country, or what they believe is best for Germany. While some see them as one and the same, others separate the two. Should it come down to fighting, soldiers will fight.” This is a gripping work of historical fiction, authentic and captivating.
An impressive blend of literary drama and historical commentary.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5107-6942-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
This large, stately, and intensely powerful new novel by the author of Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show is constructed around a cattle drive—an epic journey from dry, hard-drinking south Texas, where a band of retired Texas Rangers has been living idly, to the last outpost and the last days of the old, unsettled West in rough Montana. The time is the 1880s. The characters are larger than life and shimmer: Captain Woodrow Call, who leads the drive, is the American type of an unrelentingly righteous man whose values are puritanical and pioneering and whose orders, which his men inevitably follow, lead, toward the end, to their deaths; talkative Gus McCrae, Call's best friend, learned, lenient, almost magically skilled in a crisis, who is one of those who dies; Newt, the unacknowledged 17-year-old son of Captain Call's one period of self-indulgence and the inheritor of what will become a new and kinder West; and whores, drivers, misplaced sheriffs and scattered settlers, all of whom are drawn sharply, engagingly, movingly. As the rag-tag band drives the cattle 3,000 miles northward, only Call fails to learn that his quest to conquer more new territories in the West is futile—it's a quest that perishes as men are killed by natural menaces that soon will be tamed and by half-starved renegades who soon will die at the hands of those less heroic than themselves. McMurtry shows that it is a quest misplaced in history, in a landscape that is bare of buffalo but still mythic; and it is only one of McMurtry's major accomplishments that he does it without forfeiting a grain of the characters' sympathetic power or of the book's considerable suspense. This is a masterly novel. It will appeal to all lovers of fiction of the first order.
Pub Date: June 1, 1985
ISBN: 068487122X
Page Count: 872
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1985
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A compelling take on the classic whodunit.
The shocking murder of a public figure at a high-end hotel has everyone guessing who the culprit might be.
Twenty-five-year-old Molly Gray, an eccentric young woman who's obsessed with cleaning but doesn't quite have the same ability to navigate social cues as those around her, loves working as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. Raised by her old-fashioned grandmother, who loved nothing more than cleaning and watching Columbo reruns, Molly has an overly polite and straightforward manner that can make her seem odd and off-putting to her colleagues despite her being the hardest worker at the hotel. After her grandmother's death, Molly's rigid life begins to lose some of its long-held balance, and when the infamous Mr. Charles Black, a rich and powerful businessman suspected of various criminal enterprises, is found murdered in one of the rooms she cleans, her whole world gets turned upside down. Before Molly knows what's happening, her odd demeanor has the police convinced she's guilty of the crime, and certain people at the hotel are a little too pleased about it. With the help of a few new friends (and while fending off new foes), she must begin to untangle the mystery of who really killed Mr. Black to get herself off the hook once and for all. Though the unusual ending might frustrate some readers, this unique debut will keep them reading.
A compelling take on the classic whodunit.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-35615-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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