Subject: Fatherland by Robert Harris, a review

From: [email-masked] (Fungi from Berkeley)
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 21:38:23 GMT

Fatherland
                                 a novel by
                               Robert Harris
				   1992
                            ISBN 0-679-41273-5
                                 review by
                                Jamey Jacob

	1964; Nazi Germany. Enough said, you get the point. This is an
alternate history novel on the genre's most popular topic: what if Germany
won WWII?
	The story is set in 1964 Berlin, where the entirety of the city is
preparing for Fuhrertag, Adolf Hitler's 75th birthday. But that is not the
only special occasion. The president of United States, Joseph P. Kennedy, is
meeting Hitler in Berlin to initiate detente and halt the Cold War that has
waged between the two superpowers since the end of the war. Into all of this
stumbles Sturmbannfuhrer Xavier March, homicide investigator with the Berlin
Kriminalpolizei. A retired official prominent in the General Government
(which replaced what had been Poland) has been found dead. Though it appears
to be either a suicide or accident, March's instincts tell him otherwise.
This and an order from the Gestapo that they are taking over the case. March
refuses, of course, and later enlists the aid of a beautiful (of course)
American reporter who discovered another suspicious death. March soon
realizes that the Gestapo wants certain people dead, and only one man
remains to tell him why. But nobody knows where he is, and if March doesn't
find him first, the Gestapo most certainly will.
	This is a detective mystery, through and through, with the stakes a
little higher than most. The story takes place within the week before
Fuhrertag. Even so, the first half of the book moves slow, with details
being few and far between. Once the head of the Kriminalpolizei, Artur Nebe,
enters the picture with an ultimatum for March, the story begins
accelerating the pace.
	The problem with this mystery, however, is that the reader already
knows what the mystery is. This makes the task of story-telling difficult
for the author. The carrot must come from the suspense and danger the hero
experiences (the stick is, you bought the book, you might as well read it!)
With this, Harris does fairly well. You get to know March and his motives
and feel for his character. The ending is climactic and, to me at least,
surprising.
	As for a historian's or alternate history buff's point of view,
however, this novel is extremely lacking. Harris has created not so much an
alternate history as he has an alternate reality. He only spends a few
paragraphs on how Germany beat Russia and then he doesn't explain why things
happened the way they did, just that they did. Harris has gone for the
mainstream market, not desiring to bog down the reader with petty details of
why things went wrong (or right). He is only interested in how things might
have turned out if it had gone the way he suggests.
	The problem is, the picture he paints of 1964 Germany isn't all that
gruesome or horrific. There are plenty of blindly patriotic people, but this
is nothing new in any country in any time. The Geheime Staatspolizei, or
Gestapo, is still running amok, no surprise there. The Jews were still
exterminated, the only difference is nobody knows about it now. What Harris
lacks is a twist, something to hook those in the know with something new or
unexpected. Unraveling this twist would have helped the first 3/4 of the
novel tremendously.
	This is Robert Harris' first novel and only his second book.
Knowing this, I look forward to his next work. All in all, a good weekend
read.

%B	  Fatherland
%E	  Robert Harris
%I	  Random House
%C	  New York
%D	  1992
%G	  ISBN 0-679-41273-5
%O	  clothbound 
%P	  338pp

 Common human laws and interests     I have looked into the abyss,
 and emotions have no validity           and the abyss has
 or significance in the vast             looked into me.
 cosmos-at-large...                  Neither liked what we saw.
                   -HP Lovecraft                 -Brother Theodore

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