Double Crossing

Published in 1983, DOUBLE CROSSING is no more dated than CASABLANCA or ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. On the contrary, set largely in totalitarian East Germany, it dramatizes the prison-like life there and the promise of constitutionally protected freedom on the other side of the Berlin wall better than anything I've read. Not just facts and statistics but longings and wishes and fears take us to this other time and place. I doubt that the author literally visited every locale or saw those real or imagined events - but her outstanding research makes it seem that way. The plot - revolving around brothers in conflict but including their friends, enemies and associates - is loaded with surprises as we try to guess what each character will do in crucial situations, as we gradually learn who they are and what they know about each other. The secrets and lies are never far away, but amazingly, I never found the narrative confusing. I literally got chills when the Russian doctor confronts a shocking revelation -- and the reader realizes that things which couldn't get more complicated, just did. The story plays out logically, leading to an appropriately violent conclusion, as each character learns the truth on a need-to-know basis, and the reader along with them. It's a fine and informative novel, one that deserves a read or re-read through the filter of present-day realities.

"Man's Humanity to Man": It's a line from this riveting Cold War-era novel from Erika Holzer. That line sums up the book's theme, during its climatic chapters. As for the plot, I won't give too much away, save that it's intricately plotted suspense that culminates in a daring escape at the Berlin Wall. I first read "Double Crossing" in 1984, shortly after it was published, and while stationed at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, as an Army private, just turned 19. Coming back to reading it (doing the math, I'm now 42 -- more than two lifetimes of a nineteen year old) I was prepared to find it "dated," because the Berlin Wall fell just five years later, in 1989. At the time of my first reading, I was reading a lot of Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett spy novels, and remembered regarding this book as belonging in the same company. Yet, upon re-reading, "Double Crossing" was even better this time because it wasn't dated at all, it just aged nicely. Reading a book at 42 is worlds away from reading it at 19, and what struck me this go around was that Holzer took a family saga and wrapped it inside a political spy thriller. At 19, I read it for its plot, but this time I got wrapped up in the personal lives of its characters. Although the particular genre in which Holzer wrote this book requires its characters to be "types," the characters were hardly "typecast": Rather, she gives us some interesting heroes, sadistic villains, a ravishing heroine and some tragic heroes that make this novel as palatable a read for those (such as I) who enjoy convincing characterization as much as fast-paced plotting ("Double Crossing" has both). All the qualities you find in Shakespeare's "Othello" or "Hamlet" are on display in the pages of this book: Envy, fear, opportunism, betrayal, honor, ambivalence, boldness, avarice, cowardice, and redemption coarse through the veins and actions of Holzer's panoply of characters. "Double Crossing" was a real page-turner, not so much because of "what happens next," but because of "what will happen TO THEM next." I got all wound up in the fate of Soviet doctor Kiril Andreyev, his lover Galya, hot-tempered American journalist Adrienne Brenner, her world-famous surgeon husband Kurt Brenner, and even an East German Stasi agent, Oberst von Eyssen. "Double Crossing" also played a part in my own little personal mission I had when going into East Germany often to West Berlin, as a soldier stationed in West Germany during the mid-1980s. I visited West Berlin often, probably about twenty times. Only a few times did I go by the British troop train; mostly I took the Autobahn from Helmstedt. We Allied soldiers were permitted only to stop at the picnic rest areas; we were forbidden to prematurely exit before reaching the checkpoint at West Berlin. The first time I stopped, I did so to use the restroom, but I took in the surroundings. We were not permitted to talk with any East Germans, but we were free to spend a limited amount of time there to

In the end, a good novel is about people and Ms. Holzer does a wonderful job in "Double Crossing," making us care about those who live in slavery and will do anything to find freedom. This is an uplifting, powerful novel by someone who obviously knows the territory. i recommend it highly.

This is probably the most consistently riveting book I've ever read. It maintains a tension throughout, and the plot twists never let the reader get a sense of what is to come next. The term is greatly overused, but it applies here; I couldn't put it down!