Pottinger,
Stan. The Last Nazi. St. Martin’s. August 2003. c336p.
ISBN 0-312-27676-1. $24.95. Fiction.
In 1944, Adalwolf, the foster son of Dr. Mengele, is responsible
for calming children who are slated to undergo fatal
medical experiments in the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Fifty-eight years later, Adalwolf is living in the
United States under an assumed identity. In public,
he is a doctor with his own fertility clinic; in private,
he is working on a deadly virus that functions only
when certain genetic markers are present. Melissa Gale,
a lawyer for the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (the “Nazi
hunters”), is trying to have a baby with her journalist husband David.
What seems at first a well-developed subplot soon reveals itself to be a major
issue. Melissa learns that she is about to be turned into an ethnic biological
weapon of mass destruction, capable of wiping out the 13million Jews in the world.
On this premise, rendered believable by thorough research and convincing characterization,
Pottinger (The Fourth Procedure) spins a tale that grabs the reader by the throat
as it takes stunning twists and turns in its drive to a heart-stopping conclusion.
Be prepared to feel horror for a vaillain who is not only the last Nazi but also
one of the most terrifying. Highly recommended.