THE GREEN FRONTIER

Retired Scotland Yard Supt. Simon Kenworthy (Playground of Death, Surrender Value) is forced to recall his Army service in postwar Berlin when he's asked to help investigate the murder of well-known German pastor Hans Pagendarm--who's come to England to make one of his frequent appearances on a popular, religio-muckraking TV program. ""Pagendarm,"" it seems, was really Helmut Schultze: a sometime-priest, sometime-SS-officer who years ago escaped from Berlin. . . thanks to the young Simon Kenworthy. Moreover, two of the other panelists on that TV program have links with the past: fellow escapee Dr. Felix Krause, a rocket expert now living in England; and retired Brigadier John Devereux, who (with his testy batman Hedges) had a long-ago encounter of a different sort with Pagendarm/Schultze. But the overriding presence through the labyrinth of memories, aliases, and motives is Pagendarm's wife Anna-Maria--a born conniver/survivor. And the complicated weave of past and present, though a shade too elaborate for its own good, provides sturdy, absorbing entertainment in the reliable Hilton manner.