NIGHT OF BROKEN SOULS

Monteleone's 21st supernatural suspenser (The Resurrectionist, 1995, etc.) is his best-plotted and most effective in several years. Many psychiatrists have noticed a similarity in the nightmares of their patients. These terrified people, it seems, have been invaded by the reincarnated souls of Nazi death camp victims, reliving the childhoods of Polish or Czech victims, their arrests, deportation to Auschwitz, and eventual gassing. While Monteleone's sketches of that death camp will give many readers their own dÇjÖ vu about Sophie's Choice and Schindler's List, his standard ploy of introducing the CIA as the villain midway need not be feared: The story's main antagonist, a CIA hit man, is introduced right at the start. Like most of the other victims, Harford Nichols, the CIA assassin, has been experiencing blackouts and waking up in far-distant places, having assassinated people completely unknown to him. Once recovered by the Agency, Nichols is placed under the care of Dr. Isabella Mussina, who induces past-life recall through hypnosis. Nichols turns out to be harboring the soul of Hirsh Dukor, a blood-mad Jew who became the right-hand assistant of Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz. Once his recall has been brought forward full force, Nichols becomes Dukor, attacks Dr. Mussina, escapes to Manhattan and sets about plotting to rid the world of Jews, determined that the planet will enter the millennium with a one-world Nazi-styled dictatorship. Meanwhile, also in Manhattan, Dr. Michael Keating is dealing with several patients who have painful, troubling memories of past lives. Putting his files together with Dr. Mussina's, he decides that the best way to foil Dukor is to gather all the reincarnated victims together in New York, focusing their power against that of the lethal Dukor/Nichols. Then begin—whoosh!—the special effects. Swift, strongly meshed plot elements speed you through an ingenious gripper.