The 34th Degree

In this leaden follow-up to The Promised War, Sam Deker, former Army Ranger and former member of the Israeli Defense Forces, travels back in time to 1943 Nazi-occupied Greece, courtesy of the Pentagon's experimental "34th Degree Neurosimulation Program," which involves injecting brain tissue from long-dead SS Gen. Ludwig von Berg and from freshly deceased Greek-American shipping tycoon Chris Andros into Deker's brain. Deker's mission is to learn the fate of an ancient manuscript, the Maranatha text, which may hold the secret to world domination. In 1943, Andros slips into Greece in a covert effort to recover the missing Maranatha text, while von Berg, "the most dangerous man in the Third Reich, after Hitler and Himmler," tries to stop him. Aphrodite Vasilis, a beautiful Athens socialite who was once Andros's fianc%C3%A9e and is now von Berg's unwilling mistress, makes the contest personal. Greanias covers familiar thriller territory with stock characters. (June)