cover image Strike Zone

Strike Zone

Charles Robertson. Pocket Books, $4.95 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-671-61154-5

In November 1941, German honchos think that by encouraging Japan's plans to attack Pearl Harbor they can keep America out of the European war. To assist their allies, Nazi authorities send agent Carlos Gunther Robles to sabotage the Panama Canal and prevent U.S. Atlantic vessels from reinforcing the Pacific fleet. The operation is to be funded with Italian- and Japanese-owned dollars held in Mexican banks. The British discover the plans to move the money (although not its intended use) and persuade the FBI to replace it with counterfeit, hoping to discredit German spies trying to buy services in Central America. The FBI, unwilling to distribute fake money itself, enters an uneasy alliance with American ex-bootlegger Harry Fox, who runs a nightclub in Panama. An attempt to exchange the dollars goes sour, and Robles kills Fox's partner. Fox determines to make the switch and avenge his friend's murder with the help of a former starlet from his past. Robertson ( Directive Sixteen ) spins a diverting yarn, but it lacks the suspense needed to make the reader forget--however briefly--the historically inevitable finale: the plan's failure. (May)