Munich

Munich
© 2018 Robert Harris
354 pages

By this time tomorrow, Adolf Hitler could be dead...

The year is 1938, and Europe is again sliding into war -- a war that only one man wants.  The man is Adolf Hitler, who is determined to claim all of Czechoslovakia for the Greater German Reich. He's already annexed Austria, and sent the French running from the Rhineland.   The little Bavarian  has opposition, however: across the Channel, Neville Chamberlain is working around the clock to keep another bloodbath from erupting, and at home a group of  German officers who worry for their nation's future are contemplating a little regime change in Berlin .  A last-minute peace conference with hasty security arrangements  might be just the opportunity

Munich must be one of the most famous conferences in western history, remembered in shame as the time when the West hung Czechoslovakia out to dry, and were rewarded with Hitler's breach of trust when he invaded that country and Poland, anyway.  But a good history teacher, when approaching Munich, will put students in Neville Chamberlain's chair -- a seat from which the future cannot be viewed, a seat that sits in the gloom of memory, the memory of a war that emptied villages and destroyed millions of families not twenty years before. Europe cannot survive another war like that.  Even if the Czechs have to give up their border with Germany, it's not as if Czechoslovakia is a real country, anyway --  diplomats invented it not twenty years ago.  And so while Britain and France resentfully prepare for war just in case things go wrong, Chamberlain works like a dog to find any way to get Hitler to the table. And he does, via an Italian connection.

Robert Harris uses two men to  deliver this four-day drama: the first is Hugh Legat, a man attached to Chamberlain's staff who constantly worries that secret from his past will be unearthed as tensions with Germany grow ever greater. The second is Paul Hartmann, a German functionary who serves Hitler by day and helps plan his death by night. Paul and Hugh were Oxford friends,  and Paul hopes to pass information onto England via Hugh that will ensure that the Allies-in-waiting will call Hitler's bluff. Hartmann wants the war, for if Hitler  takes Germany down that crimson path again, the conspiracy can be justified in giving him the fate that he would inflict on so many others:  death.

Harris succeeds in turning a conference whose consequences are a known fact into a thriller with the potential for upset, and humanizes a figure who -- at least in American histories -- is depicted as something of a boob.  The Chamberlain of Munich is not a quiescent, cowering figure: he's resourceful, obstinate, and determined to deny Hitler the war he wants.  Although Munich suffers slightly from the fact that most people know what happened at the conference, it's still a good thriller, in part because of the espionage and anti-Hitler conspiracy.

Related:

• Fatherland, Robert Harris.  An alt-history detective novel set in a victorious Germany, where Hitler is set to celebrate his 70th birthday by completing the conquest of Russia...but someone is digging up bones from the past. My introduction to Harris, who has kept me reading since 2008.
• Garden of Beasts, Jefferey Deaver. Another novel set in  prewar Germany, this time during the "Nazi Olympics". 
• Phillip Kerr's German novels, which always skip around a bit in time but almost always spend time in WW2-era Germany.  Lots of gallows humor, but I have to read him sparingly.

Conclave

Conclave
© 2016 Robert Harris
484 pages

Inside the Casa Santa Marta, the elders of Rome are again assembling to choose the next bishop of Rome, and thereby the governor of Catholics the world over.  The Dean of the College of Cardinals labors in sadness prompted not only by the death of his friend and boss, but by the fact that he now has to manage the conclave of cardinals,  in which over a hundred men are hidden in a secret chamber until such time as they elect St. Peter's successor.  Although it is an election covered in the shroud of holiness, it is an election still, and the cardinals who vote are men of ambition. Their desires and foibles bring endless complication -- blackmail and simony do stir the pot --  leading to numerous dramatic shifts during successive ballots. The finale, which unfolds in a Europe smoldering under terrorist attack, includes another twist ending which proved an Achilles heel, for me.  Anyone who has followed my reading here knows I read anything Harris writes, delighting in his diverse settings (Rome, Cold War Russia, Belle Epoque France...and so on!)   Everything that lead ups to it was first-rate: the descriptions of  places and processes within the Vatican usually hidden away, the arguments between the cardinals over what sort of man and what sort of direction were needed -- and then Harris has this Dan Brown, Angels and Demons moment in the last ten pages.  Ah, well.

Dictator

Dictator
○ 2015 Robert Harris
416 pages

"Why should you be the one to stop Caesar?!"

"Who else is there?"

It is the twilight of the Roman republic.  Liberty and the rule of law are in tatters, withered by an alliance of egotists, and Rome itself imperiled by the manipulators of mobs. For Marcus Tullius Cicero, the days have never been darker. Having spoken out against the unholy trinity --  Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar -- he finds himself an exile, forced to leave behind the life of Rome for a gloomy retreat in pestilential Thessolonika.  The greatest orator in Rome has not yet said his final piece, however. Soon the alliance of ambition will tear itself apart,  and therein lies one last chance for true men of the Republic to return the ship of state to a safe harbor.  For Cicero, the  rise and fall of Julius Caesar will be the last stand of republican virtue and Cicero's own concluding moment of brilliance before winking out.  Dictator is the finale to Robert Harris' biographical trilogy of Cicero,  one fitting but sad.

As the would-be great men vie for power, Cicero struggles between despair and determination. He is exiled twice, and withdraws wearily into the countryside of his own accord another time, growing steadily more tired from a struggle that seems pointless. The ever-shifting balance of power is ever against the restoration of the rule of law,  leaving the Republic dominated by first three personalities, then two, then one, and – finally, chaos that will spell an end to not only republican liberty, but to Cicero himself.   This is not a slow fade, however. Instead, Cicero will collect himself, gathering his robes and striding into the Senate – or wherever debate can be head once a rioting mob burns the senate building down – and delivering fiery oration against those who would reduce Rome into another petty dictatorship, or maneuvering in private to frustrate Caesar and Marc Anthony’s dreams of kingly power.

The political drama might be stronger if most readers didn’t know exactly what might happen; taken as a story, removed from history, the ending is wholly unexpected, as  not until the last does Cicero’s underestimation of Octavius backfire against him and doom Rome to empire.  Another element of the story, more pervasive here given the vagaries of fortune and Cicero’s fight against gloom, is philosophy. In his periods of isolation and defeat, Cicero creates an update to Plato’s The Republic, and several commentaries on Stoicism. These aren’t woolgathering for him, either;  his appreciation for the preeminence of virtue, his practice of some Stoic precepts,  serves as his motivation to endure whatever fate sees fit to throw at him. If it means tempting death by defying Caesar – so be it.

Dictator has been a long time coming,  but it is a fitting send-off for a man hailed as a father of the nation. In Imperium we saw him rise from rural obscurity to the senate, achieving rank on his merits alone; in Conspirata, he faced down a mob to defend the rule of law, and in Dictator – when the Senate has burned, and every constitutional authority buried – he goes down fighting, thrusting his throat toward an executors knife and bidding him witness: this is how a Man dies  The conclusion rendered by Cicero’s secretary Tiro is best, however:  what matters most with Cicero is not his undeserved death, but his accomplishments in life.  He was the last man of the Roman republic, and Harris’ treatment of his life does both Cicero and the reader well.

An Officer and a Spy

An Officer and a Spy
© 2013 Robert Harris
496 pages 

  In the late 19th century, the Dreyfuss Affair shook France when one Captain Alfred Dreyfuss, accused of selling French military secrets to the Germany General Staff.  Declared guilty, publicly disgraced, and dramatically exiled, Dreyfuss’ name became a lightning rod of controversy. On trial, more than Dreyfuss himself, was the pride of the army and the Jewish question. Could a Jew  be a loyal citizen of the Republic?   An Officer and a Spy is a history of the affair in novel form, from the perspective of Colonel Marie-Georges Picquart, who observed the trial in its entirety and who, upon becoming an intelligence master,  began to realize that something was amiss. Though Picquart begins as hostile to Dreyfuss, his investigation of ongoing security concerns reveals that not only is there a spy still operating within the General Staff, but the case against Dreyfuss was based on ‘evidence’ too flimsy to be respectable. When he attempts to call his superiors’ attention to this miscarriage of justice and take down the real spy, however, Pichquart becomes another target of an entrenched institution desperate to save face: the French army.

            Robert Harris has displayed his strengths as a writer of fiction, with books as diverse as political thrillers set in ancient Rome  to modern science-fiction thrillers set in financial markets. After books like The Fear Index and The Ghost, An Officer and a Spy is a return to the genre in which Harris proved his writing mettle: historical fiction.  Its integration of source material and narrative is impressive, drawing extensively on Dreyfusses' letters but never obtrusively. Trials are a mainstay here, as not only Dreyfuss but various suspects are dragged before courts-martial and forced to defend themselves. Picquart himself is never officially tried, but when his associates are he might as well be, for he is exiled to Africa and given a pointless and likely suicidal mission.  Being a few years removed from my French history courses, I don't know how the development of Picquart's case aligns with reality, but it's excellent fiction. I suspect Harris stays close to the facts, because certain characters, like the 'real' spy, aren't as overblown as they might be in a purely fictional novel:  the real spy isn't particularly sinister, but in pure fiction he could have been developed as a mastermind. Because in reality he managed to stay hidden accidentally, the true villain of the piece is the French army's distrust of Jews and their obsession with protecting themselves from additional controversy.  Considering how rich in detail this book is about life during the 'beautiful epoch', before the great war, and about the craft of intelligence in particular,  it's an attractive historical piece while doubling as a fascinating political and legal thriller.

The Fear Index

The Fear Index
© 2009 Robert Harris
304 pages

Dr. Alexander Hoffman is a brilliant physicist-turned-financier who may be losing his mind.  It’s not as if the software he designed to manage investments in stocks, securities, and the like isn't still successful; it’s turned him into one of the wealthiest men in town, and in Geneva, Switzerland, that’s saying something. It’s just that strange things keep happening, like a book arriving in the post which he apparently bought, using a bank account he had no idea existed, and the fellow trying to eat him.  A near-fatal break-in and a series of inexplicable incidents  unsettle the doctor, on the verge of making a business deal that would catapult him into Scrooge McDuck-like wealth.  To make matters worse, the software he designed is acting increasingly erratic; it’s always had a mind of its own (it originated, after all, from Hoffman’s research into autonomous machine reasoning, or AI), but lately it’s been acting absolutely mental. Billions and billions of dollars are at stake: this is no time for the man of the hour and his ultimate computer to start  setting things on fire. The Fear Index is the tale of Hoffman’s  and the global economy’s dive into madness. Harris' gifts for writing thrillers, usually in historical settings with The Ghost excepting,, translate well to this interesting mix of science fiction and business. The reader is kept as baffled and increasingly alarmed at what's happening to the doctor,  and Harris cleverly ties the novel's events to real-world financial happenings, making this historical fiction of a sort.  He also provides a twist ending that doesn't spoil all the fun, one which leaves readers pondering at what monster has been awakened even as the storyline's problems are resolved.  It's not as stellar as his other works, limited in part by the odd mix of genres, but it's still a fine psycho-adventure.

Conspirata

Conspirata
© 2009/2010 Robert Harris
340 pages

“Until this moment, gentlemen, I did not realize the extent to which there were two conspiracies I had to fight. There was the conspiracy which I destroyed, and then there was the conspiracy behind that conspiracy -- and that inner one prospers still. Look around you, Romans, and you can see how well it prospers!”

Imperium and Pompeii sold me on Robert Harris as an author, and I anticipated with eagerness Imperium’s sequel, the second part of his biographical trilogy of Marcus Tullius Cicero. The sequel (Lustrum's) release in America was delayed for three months, after which time it arrived as Conspirata. Imperium ended with Cicero’s rise to the consulship (63 BC), the highest office in Rome. He earns the office not through family ties or money, but through sheer political prowess and oratorical might. He will need both to survive in late Republican Rome -- in a time  of political crisis and turmoil. The dispossessed, hungry, and desperate masses view the violent would-be revolutionary Catalina as their savior.  Cicero and Catalina are bitter rivals, and their machinations against the other dominate the initial two-thirds of the book. Catalina’s desire to overthrow the Republic is personal for Cicero, and not just because of the latter's adoration for tradition and Roman virtue:  Catalina has sworn to murder Cicero, and inspires his supporters to hate our subject. In spite of popular hatred, Cicero is determined to maintain the rule of law against the threat of violence.

Although Catalina is the most direct and obvious threat, Cicero will find that he is not the only threat. The revolutionary is flanked by the young and ambitious Julius Caesar, whose own adeptness at the game of politicians is startling. Supporting the both of them is Crassus, the robber-baron and king-maker of his day:  Crassus, whose vast wealth can buy him everything but the glory he seeks, is willing to do whatever it takes to make a public name for himself. Looming in the distance is Pompey, whose opinion of himself after the destruction of Rome's foreign enemies is so great that he refers to himself as “the Great”.  The legendary general commands the respect of all: his own ambition to rule the world is thwarted only by the equal ambition of Caesar and Crassus. What unites these men is their lust for glory and power -- and standing against them are men like the pragmatic Cicero and the puritanically idealistic Cato. In this novel’s  five year span (known as a lustrum), Cicero’s star will rise to glory despite the odds -- but against such powerfully arrayed forces, it may not long shine.

Conspirata is a first-rate political thriller, one that invokes the tension between idealism and pragmatism as well as the on-going fight between the haves and the have nots. Cicero emerges as a sympathetic character even as he is partially corrupted by his own success, largely because those he stands against are such scoundrels. The very nature of politics emerges through the various political fights here, as they both its idealism and its tendency toward corruption for both noble and ignoble purposes. The struggle between the optimates and populares intrigues me, largely because it continues today, giving Rome’s political dramas steadfast relevance. Harris has triumphed here.

Related:

• Steven Saylor's Catalina's Riddle, which has the main character give shelter to Cataline during the power struggle. 

The Ghost

The Ghost: a Novel
© 2007 Robert Harris
412 pages

I know the Internet is the stuff a paranoiac's dreams are made of. I know it parcels up everything -- Lee Harvey Oswald, Princess Diana, Opus Dei, AL Qaeda, Israel, M16, crop circles -- and with pretty blue ribbons of hyperlinks it ties them all into a single grand conspiracy. But I also know the wisdom of the old saying that a paranoiac is simply a person in full possession of the facts...

With those words, a ghostwriter's struggle to find his client's voice begins to grow into a mystery thriller, ending unexpectedly. The controversial prime minister of the United Kingdom stepped down from his post two years ago, accepting ten million dollars by a US publishing firm for the publication of his memoirs. Wanting to leave a testament behind him but unwilling to actually do the work, Adam Lang -- a "thinly veiled" version of Tony Blair -- passes the work off to loyal aide Mike McAra, who spends two years engrossed in libraries doing research. As Lang and his ghostwriter approach the deadline, McAra's body washes up on a beach. The PM's wife Ruth Lang, having read several ghost-written works by our narrator -- as the book is written in first-person -- recommends him to finish the job.

The timing is most inconvenient, as an ex-colleague of Lang's has recently seen fit that the International Criminal Court should investigate Blai-- pardon me, Lang's -- role in allowing the United States to kidnap several Pakistani nationals and then stick them in secret "black site" interrogation centers to be tortured for information. As such, Lang -- holed up on an island in the United States while resting from a recent lecture tour -- is forced to respond to those accusations while being interviewed by our narrator. The potential stress of the job does not compete with the $250K our narrator is being paid for the month of work, and so he takes it on.

He struggles to find his subject's voice early on, grappling with the question of who his client is. Who is the man behind the public face? Nothing makes sense, and in the course of doing his research he stumbles into more serious questions, questions that endanger his life and trap him in a web of political intrigue. I enjoyed the book extremely: unlike Enigma and Archangel, I didn't have to work my way through this one. Every page captured my attention, and I finished it in a matter of hours. Characterization is particularly strong in this novel, I think. I laughed out loud when reading the narrator's response to seeing his predecessor's work for the first time: after reading through an extremely dull manuscript (which he is expected to revise), he realizes how much work there is ahead of him and describes his reaction: "I pressed my hands to my cheeks and opened my mouth and eyes wide, in a reasonable imitation of Edvard Munch's The Scream." After the emoting, he turns to see Lang's wife staring at him. Her only response is to raise an eyebrow and say, "As bad as that?" I found the scene funny: Harris doesn't have his narrator describe his feelings: he has the narrator show them in a spontaneous way. The characters' personalities come through in little quirks like this. Another example is Ruth Lang's bodyguard, who likes to read Harry Potter books on the job. There aren't too many major characters, and each of them are fleshed out well. (Lang, interestingly, receives no physical descriptions beyond his clothing: if Lang is indeed Tony Blair, I suppose Harris thought none was necessary. It's as if he's telling the story with a wink to his audience. The story, by the way, is told to the reader -- breaking the fourth wall -- by the unnamed narrator, and so includes bits of foreshadowing. Nothing is ruined, though. Beyond characterization, the book's plot develops in interesting ways. Harris is plainly used to the modern era: at one point he has the narrator Googling for information and presents search results in the text -- including fake Wikipedia articles, lending a touch of realism. These little touches and the plot in general made for a fun read -- extremely enjoyable stuff, and a very worthy diversion from the sociology paper I worked on all day.

Archangel

Archangel: A Novel
© 1998 Robert Harris
432 pages

No one can accuse Robert Harris of same-ness in his settings: after one alternate history mystery novel set in 1975 Nazi Germany, two novels set in ancient Rome, and another set in 1943 Great Britain, his Archangel is set in Yeltsin-era Russia. Western museums are vying for the purchase of Russia's soviet archives, much to the disgruntlement of loyal Bolsheviks. British historian Fluke Kelso is one of the historians visiting Russia for a symposium, but immediately has more to deal with than simply delivering a lecture and listening to his colleagues' own. An old Soviet employee approaches Kelso, hinting that he knows the location of the secret writings of Joseph Stalin -- his "Testament", which vanished shortly after his death. The book opens with the old Soviet telling his story in flashback form to Kelso, who is utterly intrigued after he verifies elements of the old man's story. He begins an inquiry as to where Stalin's papers might be found, attracting the attention of an old KGB man who is committed to restoring the Soviet Union and of Russia's current security police. Blood is shed and the mystery sees Kelso racing to the miserable town of Archangel near Siberia with angry men with guns right behind him. While the book is a fairly enjoyable mystery thriller, it is also a partial commentary on Yeltsin-era Russia: a nation experiencing declining standards of living and rising crime. One of Kelso's colleagues believes that Russia is a new Weimar Republic, needing only a charismatic strongman to lead it and the world to further ruin. The contents of Stalin's "testament" may reveal such a man. Although it was hard to get into at first, the book developed into a fascinating read.

Enigma

Enigma
© 1995 Robert Harris
320 pages

Publishers are fond of affixing swastikas to book covers when they involve Nazi Germany in any way. Enigma is one such book, as it is a historical action-mystery story set in the grim days of 1942 when U-boat wolf packs patrolled the waters of the Atlantic, destroying convoys of supplies bound for the British isles. In Britain, groups of men are assigned to crack the cipher code that the Nazi government uses to protect its transmissions to and from the U-boats. Being able to crack the code will give the Allies a tool they need to stay alive. Tom Jericho, the central character of Enigma, is one of those men. With a photographic memory and a mind for mathematics, Jericho is an important asset of the British armed forces, but the stress of his job recently led to fainting spells. The abrupt ending of his relationship with a mysterious and attractive woman working in the same area as he does not help.

The book begins with Jericho's return to the project. He attempts to pick up the pieces of his old life, but finds that increasingly hard to do. The victories he once earned have been overturned and his old flame is impossible to find. A series of convoys from the United States make the issue of cracking the U-boat codes a necessity, but Jericho discovers evidence that may prove his old flame a German spy. Such is the story that Harris tells. I found it moderately enjoyable, although not nearly as much as other books I've read by him. That may have something to do with the math-centered plot. At any rate, it has not dulled my enthusiasm for Harris, and I look forward to reading whatever else he's written.

Pompeii

Pompeii: A Novel
© 2003 , Robert Harris
274 pages

In May 2007 I read Fatherland, an mystery book set in an alternate history setting in which Nazi Germany prevailed in World War 2 and the S.S. Holocaust is largely unknown. Last week I read Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome, by the same author, and commented that I would not expect two books in such different settings to be from the same author. I enjoyed Imperium tremendously, though, and this week continued with Pompeii. Pompeii, you may know, was a city depopulated, partially destroyed, and partially preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. I am not giving anything away here: it is fairly common knowledge, and the book itself has an erupting volcano on the cover.

The book is set four days before the eruption, in the general region surrounding Pomepii. The book holds a map in the beginning that shows the ancient towns that dotted the countryside, along with old roads and -- more related to the plot -- the old aqueduct. The book is told in the third person and is chiefly concerned with Marcus Attilus, the new aquarius of the region -- replacing the old aquarius, who stopped believing in the zodiac. An aquarius is someone who is concerned with the Aqueduct, and Attilus is very concerned with his. His family have worked with the aqueducts for at least a century, and the duct to which he has been assigned has stopped running -- and the man whose job he now holds has vanished. Although Attilus is the central character of the story, Harris also takes time to depict a local businessman and Pliny the Elder, among other characters.

For most of the book, there are several dramas unfolding. Attilius is anxious to find out why the water flow has been broken, but he can't resist poking around and trying to find out where the former aquarious has vanished to. His questions draw the ire of a local businessman, who is an ex-slave and apparently the progenitor of John Gotti. Much of the action takes place in Pompeii, and Harris paints a detailed picture of it, rendering a breathing city. What is eerie is that while I read about the half-finished baths and the graffiti on the walls, I know in the back of my head that these details have been preserved by the lava. All of the characters know that something is going to happen: they can smell sulfur, hear the rumbles of the Earth.

Although a friend of mine who enjoys Harris as much as I prefers Imperium over this, I am not so sure. While set in the same general time period as Imperium and being about more anonymous characters, it has an interesting quality all of its own. It read very well until after the actual eruption: it is more difficult to render the devastating eruption of a volcano than it is what passed before. I can't really picture what it was like in my head. I enjoyed the book immensely. Harris has earned my devotion, and I will read the other two books he has published.

To end, a picture from Civilization III that I took many months ago. I titled it "Tempting Fate".



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Imperium

Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome
© Robert Harris 2006
305 pages

I would not have expected to find a novel set in ancient Rome, nor would I expect the author of a mystery novel set in a world where Nazi Germany emerged victorious in the second world war to have penned it -- but here it is, and here Robert Harris has penned it. This is a novel set in the last days of the Old Republic -- before the dark times, before the Empire. The novel is told in the first person, from the perspective of "Tiro": slave/servant of Marcus Tullius Cicero, known chiefly by his last name. In a way, this is a biographical novel about Cicero, although it starts when he is a young politician in his twenties and culminates in his election to the consularship. The story takes us through several decades of political change in Rome, although it is not one long and fluid story: Tiro, addressing the reader directly, writes that he has no wish to bore the reader with a retelling of hum-drum events. He focuses, rather, on three very memorable and life-altering episodes in Cicero's political life.

I found the book completely compelling: not only does Harris create drama out of stuffy-sounding letters about legal incidents, but he makes the idea of Rome come alive. Its politics, its sights and sounds -- he gives the city life. Tiro's narration holds the story together and offers us a different perspective on Rome. He is aware of the plight of slaves, the existence of an entire Republic beyond the walls of Rome and the personal interests of its ruling class. He shows us Cicero when he triumphs and Cicero when he badly misjudges situations. This is excellent drama -- but beyond fiction, it is historical fiction. Here, too, Harris comes through. His depictions match what I know of the period, especially in terms of philosophy.

I enjoyed the book immensely, and am pleased to know that it is only the first book in a planned trilogy about the life of Cicero.

"The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than to destroy one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance." - Cicero, as quoted in the book. He also commented that "Sometimes one must begin a fight in order to find out how to win it."

This Week at the Library (15/5)

Books this Update:
- In at the Death, Harry Turtledove
- Fatherland, Robert Harris
- Garden of Beasts, Jeffery Deaver
- Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
- The Two Georges, Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss

My first read this week was In at the Death by Harry Turtledove, which completes his "Southern Victory" series that began with How Few Remain. As you might recall, "President" Jake Featherston of the Confederacy invaded the United States in 1941, only to realize that the Union isn't as big of a pushover as his electorate. The result is a war of economies -- one that Featherston cannot hope to win without superior technology, like bombs that can destroy whole cities. This book ends the series with two continents devastated by war and dealing with the dawn of the Nuclear Age.

In general I found the series to be enjoyable reading. As a student of history, I enjoyed looking for the parallels Turtledove attempted to draw to the real world and thinking about the world he was fashioning. I found that some things didn't make that much sense, but all in all I have no real complaints. I noticed that technology seemed to advance more quickly in this series than in real life -- specifically in terms of airplanes. An example of this is the advancement of bomber technology in the "Great War". In real life, bombers did little actual damage -- but in the books, even WW1 planes are capable of bombing cities into ruins.

Next I read Fatherland, which is an mystery novel by Robert Harris set in an alternate history setting. In Fatherland, Nazi Germany succeeded in winning the Second World War. This success came about partially because of Nazi Germany's triumph over the Soviet Union. I'm not altogether sure that this alone would have given Germany victory -- it failed to in 1917, when Russia withdrew from the Great War, surrendering most of the territory Nazi Germany gained in this fictional timeline. It's a moot point, though. The book is set in 1964. Nazi Germany controls Europe in the same way the USSR controlled eastern Europe, with the exception that western countries are allowed to pretend that they're free -- when in reality they're subject to Nazi Germany's every whim. A cold war exists between the United States and Nazi Germany, but the aging Hitler wants to ease tensions for a reason I've forgotten at the moment. U.S. President Joseph P. Kennedy announces a visit to Berlin, and this sets the stage for the book. A German police officer is startled to realize that a murder he is investigating is tied to a string of murders. All of the "victims" are former Nazi high-ups who are being eliminated for some mysterious reason. It is the job of Officer March to find out what.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, reading through it fairly quickly. The characters are solid, and the plot makes sense. I never felt lost. The book has been written with a great eye for detail, using actual historical documents as Officer March's evidence. There are lots of little touches: for instance, March mentions a symphony being conducted by Herbert von Karajan, who was in real life an Austrian national who conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for many years. He was also a member of Austria's Nazi party, although I don't know how involved in it he was. Outside of the point of derivation, I didn't see any really questionable developments in world politics in this alternate-history setting, although I am curious as to how the aging Kennedy became president.

Next I read Garden of Beasts, which is a mystery novel by Jeffery Deaver set in 1936 Berlin. I found this book and Fatherland by doing a search at my local library for "Berlin". I'm interested in the history and culture of select cities, and found these two books in the same way that I found Philip Margolin's books while looking for information about Portland. In Garden of Beasts, a German-American hitman is hired by individuals working on behalf of the U.S. government to travel to Germany and eliminate the man responsible for Nazi Germany's rearmament. That I describe this novel as a mystery novel and not adventure should tell you that the above description is not nearly complete. I was thoroughly entertained by the book, and will look for this author more. 1936, by the way, is the year the Olympics were held in Berlin. As you can imagine, the Nazis are eager that nothing sensational should happen.

I should mention John Grisham's Playing for Pizza, which I read back in December but for some reason never thought to write about until I wrote about The Appeal. Playing for Pizza is a fairly short book, and was published right before The Appeal. As you might suspect, it is not a legal thriller. If you've read Bleachers or The Broker and liked either, you'll probably like this one. An American football player with reputation for screwing up under pressure finds an opportunity to play football in the unlikeliest of places: Europe, specifically Italy. Italy, like Europe and the rest of the world (except for the United States) is dominated by soccer -- with little demand for American football. There are clubs (or at least there are in Grisham's world: I don't know if there are in reality, but I figure Grisham wrote the book out of his shocked discovery that Italians played American football.) in Italy. The men playing in these clubs do so only for fun, but Rick (the aforementioned American) will be paid. The book is about Rick and his move to Italy and his acclimating himself to a new culture. This is why I figure those who like either Bleachers or The Broker will like Playing for Pizza. Bleachers is about football, and The Broker is set in Italy and features an American getting used to Italy while fleeing for his life. The highest praise I can give this book is that Grisham is actually able to keep me interested in a book about football. John Grisham is one of my favorite authors, and this book doesn't disappoint.

The next book I read was The Two Georges, a book set in an alternate history in which George Washington traveled to England on behalf of the colonies in the 1760s, obtaining a fair deal for the colonies. The result is a world radically different from ours, where the sun never sets on the British Empire. The Crown possesses North America, Australia, and India while keeping the Ottomans, Chinese, and Hawaii within its sphere of influence. Opposing it are the Holy Alliance (an alliance between France and Spain, with various holdings across the world including "New Spain" in Central America) and the Russian Empire. France's revolution was spoiled by one Lt. Col. Bonaparte. Although the book seems to be set in the mid 1990s (judging by a recent major earthquake in San Francisco and that a wine produced in the early 1980s is just now starting to come into season), neither Germany nor Italy are united. Technology has also progressed more slowly, it seems, and much differently. Cars, for instance, use steam engines and are referred to as "steamers". Strangely enough, electric cars are also mentioned. Airships are used for commercial flights, not fixed-wing aircraft -- even though the latter are available. Although the television is starting to become commercially available, telephone technology is very limited. These changes are largely unexplained. While I can understand the political developments of this worlds, the technological ones are beyond me. Why has technology in general progressed so slowly in this world? That I don't know.

The Two Georges refers to a painting that shows Colonel George Washington bowing before his sovereign, and is symbolic of the strong relationship between Great Britain and its dominion in North America, the North American Union. The NAU enjoys something in the way of autonomy, although its head (Governor-General) is appointed by the king. The head of the NAU in this book is one Martin Luther King Jr. Sadly, his father changed his name to Martin Luther in honor of said brute in this timeline, too. At the beginning of the book, the painting is stolen, leading Colonel Bushell of the Royal American Mounted Police (RAMs) across the continent as he searches for the culprits. The likely culprits are the Sons of Freedom, white supremacists who double as fanatical separatists. In general I found it a fun read, although I was able to realize the ending before Colonel Bushell.

Pick of the Week: Garden of Beasts, Jeffery Deaver

Next week: I am knee-deep in a variety of history texts, including two I mentioned last week (History of the Ancient World and Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization).