Brandenburg

Rating:
Summary: Abysmal
Review: This work is long, weak and a tremendous disappointment. The characters are poorly formed and poorly executed. Depicted in the most impossible of situations and terribly stereotypical, they tend to irritate more than entertain. If a reader can bear grown women being referred to as girls, often, very often, and descriptions of the same being lurid and misplaces in the text of the novel, they just might enjoy this supposed thriller that takes place on both sides of the Atlantic. What I am sure of is the author knows the street address and organization of every law enforcement and counter-espionage agency in Europe. To a lesser extent in South America where in this book, a new Nazi party is doing its best to revive the Reich. There are endless and needless explanations of the form and function of these agencies throughout the novel. Still, with all this manpower and resources all over the world, the protagonist, a British DES agent, and his unlikely sidekick, a sexy, blonde journalist, are the only people between peace and a new Nazi Empire. Very predictably the sexy blonde the progeny of an SS officer and the hero, Joe Volkmann is the son of a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. However it is made clear he himself is not Jewish, only half. I think it is also very clear the author doesn't know anything about Jewish people or culture and was just trying to make the book interesting. There are some almost humorous gaffes committed by the writer when it came to ethnicity and international culture. Why a DSE agent would move a journalist he has never met into his home, cris-cross the globe with her, investigating the murder of her cousin in Paraguay is a stretch of the imagination. The reader has no idea how is footing the bill for all this travel or why European intelligencia would even be interested. The text mires down into a hodgepodge of poor Ian Fleming imitation. The hero is haunted by his father's suffering. He is also terribly clumsy and inept to be the dashing Bond-like character he's supposed to be. The beginning of the book is actually better than the latter part. Other than the grotesque but unrealistic murders and cruelty inflicted by the neo-Nazis, there is little else in the realm of action-adventure genre offered. Characters and situations depicted are weak, stereotypical and poorly if at all developed. It is just so improbable and so typical of a bad 1960's spy thriller, it is hard to finish reading. At just under 400 pages, it happens to be a long one, too. The formula used as the plot, super sharp agent, lovely sidekick, Nazis as villains, a nuclear weapon as the bad guy's bargaining chip, lots and lots of narrative about what the "girls" look like in and out of their clothes, and a climax wherein the super agent meets his arch-nemeses eye to eye, fulfilling his destiny, is just worn out. And pitifully re-done in this novel. Unless you are very bored and want a few laughs, skip this offering.

Rating:
Summary: Ummmm, what to say....
Review: Working at a prison on the midnight shift, you have to find things to keep yourself awake. I found one of the inmate's books from the library, and it just happened to be "Brandenburg".
It was barely engrossing enough to continue to read it. It has too much explaining about the scenes; right before Volkman tortures someone for info, the author describes the cold night with wind whipping off of the black water. Who cares? Also, anytime he (the author) brings up Erica, he has to mention at her beauty. Not that that is bad, but reading this over halfway through the book gets kind of old. I haven't finished this book yet, but I am uite sure that I will be disappointed. I agree with the other reviewer that talked about who financed the trip, and how stereotypical the characters are, how he is a Jew and she is a daughter of an SS officer. Ugh....