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The history books tell us that the Nazis were defeated and scattered in World War II. But what if, in 1963, a number of former SS officials (self-organized into a group called "ODESSA," acronym for Organizsation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen) plotted with the Egyptians to manufacture thousands of rockets fitted with bubonic-plague and "dirty bomb" warheads? The rockets' target would be obvious: Israel. The goal: to execute Hitler's "Final Solution," two decades after his death.
Forsyth's classic espionage thriller starts from this nightmarish premise. (How much of it is true? Forsyth won't say--"it is in this [book's] ability to perplex the reader as to how much is true and how much is false that much of the grip of the story lies," he writes.) The evil plot ends up (rather unwittingly) unraveled by a young German reporter, Peter Miller, whose dogged and ingenious pursuit of the hidden "Butcher of Riga" makes for feverish reading.
(Note: The "Butcher of Riga," Eduard Roschmann, was indeed an actual concentration-camp commandant. He was still alive when Forsyth published his book in 1972. According to Wikipedia, The Butcher died in Paraguay in 1977.
Forsyth's classic espionage thriller starts from this nightmarish premise. (How much of it is true? Forsyth won't say--"it is in this [book's] ability to perplex the reader as to how much is true and how much is false that much of the grip of the story lies," he writes.) The evil plot ends up (rather unwittingly) unraveled by a young German reporter, Peter Miller, whose dogged and ingenious pursuit of the hidden "Butcher of Riga" makes for feverish reading.
(Note: The "Butcher of Riga," Eduard Roschmann, was indeed an actual concentration-camp commandant. He was still alive when Forsyth published his book in 1972. According to Wikipedia, The Butcher died in Paraguay in 1977.
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