SPRING 1940

Engstrand has deserted the American historical setting for a novel of Norway today, of violent war and violent love, infused with violent emotionalism, a few touches of sexual ecstasy which the reader will find overwhelming. It is a tale of a family, step brothers and sisters, and of how one of them came back, after ten years in Germany, a Nazi, cold, pitiless, a Fifth Columnist who did not let family affiliations deter him from what he conceived to be his duty. There is war itself, mass killing of civilians, and revenge. A trifle overdone, it seems to me.