Knight's Cross

In this disappointingly unimaginative and mostly actionless novel, Nathanson ( The Dirty Dozen ) and Bank ( From OSS to Green Berets ) take as their plot premise a real-life OSS plan--in which Bank was involved as a young officer--to capture Hitler and his high-ranking henchmen during the final days of WW II. In late 1944, OSS captain Dan Brooks interviews hundreds of German POWs throughout Allied-occupied Europe and assembles a team of disgruntled soldiers willing to fight against their homeland. Dubbed ``Knight's Cross,'' the project clothes the defectors and German-speaking OSS agents in captured enemy uniforms and sends them to pose as a mountain infantry company in the Austrian Tyrol, the area to which Hitler is expected to flee. The Soviets find out about the plan and launch a competing venture of their own, a complicating factor that makes it impossible for anyone--including the reader--to know for sure who's doing what to whom. Bank's knowledge of OSS procedure is evident, but slow pacing and a plot that fizzles early hobble what might have been an interesting collaboration. ( May )