Mission Berlin

After a promising start, Allbeury's latest thriller falters and finally fails amid a welter of plots within plots topped by an unlikely love story and a sentimental ending. Thirty years after the end of World War II, David Mills is re-recruited by British Intelligence. Neo-Nazis are apparently reactivating the old Gehlen intelligence group, with some help from renegade CIA-ers, aiming to wreck East-West detente. Mills is to get help from his old POW chum Otto Munsel, now liaison between West German politicians and the country's intelligence service. Munsel won't help at first but changes his mind when his promiscuous 20-year-old daughter Jutta falls in love with Mills. The neo-Nazis, centered in Hamburg and led by an artistocratic industrialist and a brothel owner, plan to blow up the city hall and assassinate Tito. They are finally foiled after much to-ing and fro-ing on autobahns, shallow moralizing and almost two dozen violent deaths. Suspense is vitiated when all the deaths (except the last, pointless one) occur offstage, and credibility marred when CIA agents speak British English. (September 15)