Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 15, 1990 TAG: 9004150319
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by ROBERT ALOTTA
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
World War II has not begun, but one of Hitler's advisers - Professor Wilhelm Vierhaus - conceives a plan to keep Roosevelt and the Americans out of the war when it begins. The key to his stratagem is Germany's foremost actor and master of disguise, Johann Ingersoll.
Vierhaus' idea is to have Ingersoll, who has never been seen by anyone, not even Hitler, accidentally disappear. With the help of Nazi leaders, undercover agent is now free to become someone else, a native-born American. At the propitious moment, he will throw off his disguise and complete the project that will change the course of history.
Until the last moment, everything goes according to plan, despite Ingersoll's proclivity to beat up on prostitutes and to snap women's necks in the throes of passion. Isn't it great that novels can do what history can't?
Siebenundszwanzig's nemesis is a person he has never met: Francis Scott Keegan, ex-bootlegger to Franklin D. Roosevelt, millionaire playboy and man-about-Europe. Keegan falls in love with a German chanteuse, Jenny Gould, who, because of her Jewish blood, is confined to Dachau and suffers the fate of millions of Jews. To avenge his love's death, Keegan takes on the mission impossible of locating a man who has never been seen and has disappeared somewhere in the United States.
Though the task may seem impossible to the average reader, it is far from impossible for William Diehl to make it all seem possible. Diehl, author of "Sharky's Machine" and "Thai Horse," is a master when it comes to involving the reader in his fictional world.
The whole plot of "27" is implausible, but so too were notions of concentration camps and genocide. Diehl is able to keep the reader reading and on pins and needles for all 559 pages. It's only when you've finished reading that you start to wonder if it all could come about the way the author wrote it. By then, it's too late; you've finished the book and expelled that breath you've been holding for the past several hours.
by CNB