IN FACE OF DANGER

On business in Germany as WW II looms and the internal climate grows more and more ominous, orphaned Ann and her reporter uncle, both English, have a car accident which lands Uncle Dick in a hospital and Ann in a German home where, she discovers, two Jewish girls are hidden in the attic. (Their mother, a doctor, is wanted for helping prisoners escape and for information on her insider accomplice.) But an official's daughter next door--a spoiled invalid who fastens onto Ann for company--becomes dangerously inquisitive, and the landlady's son, a Hitler Youth, develops painfully ambivalent feelings about the family secret. From there Kay plots a midnight flight from the Gestapo; a search of the house when the blockfuhrer becomes suspicious; secret conferences with the Mother Superior of a convent where Dr. Weiss is hiding; and at the end a stormy, split-second ride to the Swiss border with the whole Weiss family in Uncle Dick's car. More a standard thriller than an Upstairs Room, and not without contrivances and improbabilities, this is nevertheless a brisk page-turner, with Kay's atmospheric evocation of 1938 Germany sharpening the suspense.