Fatherland

I reached into my pile of yellowing paperbacks to read Fatherland, a thriller by Robert Harris that is set in an alternative history where Germany won World War II. As these things usually are, the alternatives are handled well and tickle the brain, but overall I found the thriller part of it a bit dry and forced.

The protagonist is Xavier March, a Berlin policeman. He investigates the death of a man who turns out to be an old Nazi party big-shot. When another such man turns up dead in a suicide, March begins to question things, even after he is ordered off the case by the Gestapo. Eventually he partners with an American journalist (who is young and attractive, natch) and they follow clues that lead them to the discovery that fourteen men, all involved in the Wannsee conference that created the "Final Solution" for European Jews, have all died in mysterious circumstances.

The alternative history stuff is fun (if not a little scary to contemplate). Perhaps the cleverest bit is that the book is set in 1964, and Hitler is celebrating his 75th birthday. Attending the ceremony is the U.S.'s President Kennedy--Joseph P., not John F. (as Papa Kennedy was an isolationist and German sympathizer leading up the war). Harris also deftly supposes how Germany would have won, and the empire they would have created (the war is completely over except for Russian guerrillas in terrorist activity).

But mostly I found this book to be routine. The cloak and dagger stuff wasn't out of the ordinary, and the relationship between March and the American woman seemed right out of Hollywood. There was a particularly grueling description of March being tortured by the Gestapo, though.

Many of the characters in this book were real people of the Nazi hierarchy, including Reinhard Heydrich, and Harris has them living long after they actually died. For those steeped in the history of the conflict this book could provide intellectual titillation, but for those who want to read a good thriller, you might be disappointed.