cover image Dearest Enemy

Dearest Enemy

Alfred Shaughnessy. Tabb House (UK), $24.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-907018-81-0

In 1946, brash young British army captain John Hamilton falls in love with a ``Kraut girl'' whom he meets swimming in the Rhine. Devastated by war, occupied Germany seems an inhospitable place for an English-German romance, but a mutual love of Wagner and Mozart helps Hamilton and sincere, pretty secretary Karin Freidl to make beautiful music together for a while. Touching and sensitive, this unpretentious, semi-autobiographical love story rings with authenticity, even if the horrors of the war and its aftermath are kept largely in the background. British playwright Shaughnessy (whose TV credits include Upstairs, Downstairs ) intertwines the main story line with the hero's search, 43 years later, for the Rhine maiden he callously abandoned. It's a suspenseful and psychologically penetrating device as Sir John, now a retired judge and widower, sits in judgment on his own youthful, arrogant behavior. (June)