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I have a friend who listens to audiobooks. He claims he doesn't have the time to read. I tell him that he's just picking the wrong books to rea...er, I mean, listen to. He's not reading books like THE LAST NAZI. Listening to THE LAST NAZI would take too long. You'll read it faster than anything you've read in quite awhile. You won't be able to put it down, eat, or sleep ... ah well, you won't be able to do a lot of things. It'll also scare the sleep right out of you.
My initial thought when beginning THE LAST NAZI was that Stan Pottinger was revisiting territory previously mapped out by Ira Levin: ROSEMARY'S BABY meets THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. There's a husband and wife who desperately want to be pregnant, and a Nazi on the run (who is the last Nazi, actually) has a diabolical scheme for implementing Hitler's Final Solution. This might sound a bit familiar. Don't worry. THE LAST NAZI is totally original.
The wife of the married couple noted above is Melissa Gale. Gale is an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations that, among other things, hunts Nazis. The last Nazi who Gale is hunting is the mysterious and elusive Adalwolf. Adalwolf is rumored to be the foster son of The Third Reich's Dr. Josef Mengele, last seen polluting the waters of Chile with his dying breaths. Gale has come close to capturing Adalwolf on numerous occasions, and as THE LAST NAZI opens, she thinks she has him. Remember, however, this is the beginning of the book, not the end.
Adalwolf and Gale have been doing a deadly dance for years, and Gale has thought she has had him on numerous occasions, only to have him slip from her grasp. Adalwolf, for his part, has decided that it will be only fitting to utilize Gale as his unwilling, unwitting instrument by which Hitler's goal of the total extermination of the Jewish race will be accomplished. Adalwolf's plan is horrifically ingenious, and has the added effect of raising a moral dilemma. By the time you finish the final page of THE LAST NAZI you will be mentally out of breath, yet wishing that this fine novel had another 300 pages to go.
Pottinger excels in so many areas that it is very difficult to pick one that stands out from another. My favorite is his uncanny ability to explain complex and complicated medical matters in a way that even someone who was totally lost on the first day of biology class (beginning with the curriculum after roll was called) can understand. Pottinger, through one of his characters, presents a "comic-book model" of how a virus invades a person's system and what forces the immune system marshals to expel it. Pottinger's skill in this regard is not what makes THE LAST NAZI a keeper, however. The man is a marvel at quietly threading the plot of his thrillers with social and medical issues that create real-world dilemmas for the individuals involved.
The result is a thriller that ratchets the suspense level up with each rapidly turning page, while simultaneously creating a heartwarming effect that provides an element of hope and beauty in the face of irrational hatred. Pottinger with THE LAST NAZI continues his rapid rise up the 'A' List of thriller writers with this unforgettable, "impossible to put down" novel.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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