Fatherland

Fatherland is an absolutely brilliant novel and one of the most exciting and thought-provoking books I have every read. If this sounds like gushy over-praise, please trust me; it isn't. This book simply fires on all cylinders. If you are looking for a thrilling, nail-biter that will keep you turning pages past you bedtime, this is it. If you are looking for a novel with rich characters that will move you in their believability, here it is. If you are looking for a work that will fire up your intellect, order this book now. You will not be disappointed. Superbly conceived mystery? You got it. All rendered at a pitch-perfect pace that doesn't drag for a single paragraph. Harris is simply a great writer. I don't mean a good thriller writer (though that would certainly be enough); I mean he is a writer that has that little bit extra that makes you remember his work years later. The conception and sweep of this novel is extraordinary. The time frame for the work is the early sixties. Germany has won WWII, and American President Kennedy is scheduled to meet Adolph Hitler at a summit in Berlin to discuss a détente between the two nations. Against this backdrop, Berlin detective, Xavier March, is called in to investigate a death. What happens after that unfolds in ever darkening layers of danger. March begins to move through the bleak, nightmare world of Berlin, where massive, Teutonic architecture towers over the streets and records are kept of skull shapes to insure racial purity. I don't want to give away too much. This is the kind of work a reader should discover for themselves. When I read the back jacket of this paperback, which describes a "disillusioned but talented investigator" solving a mystery with the help of a "beautiful American journalist," it sounded slightly hackneyed, but it was just a case of some publicity genius at Ballintine underselling both the book's readership and the author. Xavier March is one of the most vivid, heroic, and memorable characters I've come across in fiction. By the end of the book, I was right there with him, pulling for him so hard it made my teeth ache. As for "Charlie" Maguire, her physical appearance is the last thing that comes to mind. What I remember is her quick temper, her stubbornness, and the brave way she manages to control her growing fear as she comes to realize she is onto much more than a good story. Her terror is palpable, and so is her strength. "I hated you on sight," she tells Detective March at one point, and means it. Her growing love for this rigid, Nazi detective, and his need for her, is done in expert, subtle strokes. By the end of the novel, and after considering it for a bit, I realized I had just read one of the most moving love stories in memory. I found this book, much to my surprise, profound. You will, too. -Mykal Banta

Berlin, 1964. 20 years have passed since Germany's victory over the Allies in World War II. Adolf Hitler has been in power for 31 years, his 75th birthday nears, and a summit meeting between the Fuhrer and President Kennedy has been announced. This is the intriguing scenario presented by British journalist-novelist Robert Harris in his first novel, Fatherland. Harris' novel, unlike Peter Tsouras' Disaster at D-Day: The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944, doesn't offer us a very detailed "alternative history" of the Second World War, which perhaps would have been the easy way out for a lesser writer. Instead, Harris smartly teases us with little glimpses at how Germany could have won the war while still losing its collective soul. Fatherland's plot revolves around Xavier March, a former U-boat skipper who has joined the German police, which has been under SS control since the mid-1930s. On a rainy April morning, March has been called to investigate what seems to be a routine incident: a corpse has been found in the Havel River near the area where high Nazi party officials have their mansions. Of course, if you have read political-police thrillers such as Gorky Park or Archangel, you know there will be nothing routine about this investigation. For this corpse's identity is none other than Doctor Josef Buhler, one of the earliest Nazi party members and former state secretary in the General Government, the part of Poland directly annexed by the Third Reich during the war. Before long, March (who is not a Nazi party member, just a dogged investigator) will follow Buhler's seemingly routine death down a dark and winding path that will lead him to Germany's darkest and best kept secret of all. For history buffs, this book is a fascinating look at what a mid-1960s Nazi Germany might have been like. Harris paints a chilling portrait of a country still at war with what remains of the Soviet Union while in a cold war with a nuclear-armed United States. Berlin is imagined as Hitler and his architect Albert Speer would have rebuilt it at war's end (in the frontispiece there is an artist's rendering of Hitler's vision for his capital), and readers will shudder with horror to see how far the Nazis' indoctrination of children extended. Harris keeps things going at a brisk pace, never boring readers or insulting their intelligence. His fictional characters interact with historical characters (although, of course, their fates ended up differently in real life, thank goodness) in a believable fashion. Of course, this type of novel requires willing suspension of disbelief, but it is well-written and, in the end, eye-opening.

I was immediately intrigued with the premise behind Robert Harris' novel Fatherland. What would have happened if Hitler's Germany had won World War II? The reader is taken to Berlin, 1964, which has become a sort of Shangra-la for Europe. U.S. President Kennedy has agreed to come to Berlin for a peace summit, and the capital is swarming with tourists and citizens ready to observe the 75th birthday of Hitler. During all this, though, the body of a high-ranking Nazi is washed up on a shore. Detective Xavier March, a former U-boat captain and SS Sturmbannfuhrer, is dispatched to investigate. His investigation uncovers an old conspiracy among high-ranking Nazis. March, who is not the cold, unhuman Nazi that is common in his country, teams up with an American Journalist, Charlotte Maguire, to find proof and escape alive.There were many good things about this book. Its setting is very realistic and depressing, its characters range from the intrepid March to the evil Globus, a former Concentration Camp commander who is determined to end March's investigation, to Maguire, the journalist who wants the truth. Although I enjoyed the book very much, I would have liked more details on the resolution of the war, but this book will both frighten and delight. I loved this book and think that you will love it too.

Robert Harris has done something incredible with "Fatherland." He has seamlessly blended the intriguing murder mystery, which is always more interesting when the investigator must battle an oppressive, secretive government to solve the case, and the fantasy of a different world that asks the question "what if?" about Hitler and World War II. The first accomplishment recalls Cold War mysterys by John Le Carre and Martin Cruz Smith, and Harris controls the plot as well as either of them. His detective's search through the past for the truth has enough plot twists and interesting characters to keep the reader turning the pages, but not so many that the book is impossible to understand. Of course, the main character is the investigator himself, Xavier Marks, and his personality must hold the reader's attention and win his or her sympathy to make a good book. Marks does both of these thanks to Harris's superb development. Marks is a much better charcter than Smith's Arkady Renko if Renko had only one book of development. That Harris can create such a strong person in just one novel is an accomplishment in itself. The other driving forse behind the novel, though, is the strong development of setting along with plot. Set in 1960's Berlin after the Nazis won WWII, the story propels itself by inspiring curiosity in its readers. Harris avoids the usually slow beginning of many mysteries by allowing the alternate world of his Berlin carry the story through the set-up of the mystery itself. Orwell's "1984" obviously comes to mind, but Harris's portrayal of Germany is completely different from Orwell's England. It serves an an incredibly interesting backdrop to the tale, but is, nevertheless, still just a backdrop. Orwell's England was the reason for and subject of his book, while Harris's book gives his mystery reason, and allows for him to focus on his subject that much more clearly. This book is a modern classic, one of the best books written in the 1990's, not just in the mystery and espionage genre, but in all of literature.