cover image Devil at Crossroad

Devil at Crossroad

James Barwick. Putnam Publishing Group, $16.95 (223pp) ISBN 978-0-399-13079-3

In 1940, members of the SS Ancestral Heritage Bureau, a division of the Gestapo dedicated to preserving the purity of the Aryan ""race,'' discover that Hitler has an illegitimate Jewish daughter in France of whom he is unaware. They quickly set out to kill Anne-Marie Claudel, who has also been helping Jews escape from Germany, but they murder her sister Jacqueline by mistake. At Jacqueline's funeral, Anne-Marie meets starving American artist Theo Chandler, who had dated her sister and who is also helping Jews flee (but he's doing it for money). They fall in love, and together flee from the Nazis, across war-torn France and on to America. Suspense, love, and diversion are neatly interwoven but this is a highly implausible tale from the author of Shadow of the Wolf and The Hangman's Crusade. (March 21)