Last Man to Die

October 1, 1992
Giving a new theatrical twist to the last days of the Nazi regime, Dobb's adventure story proposes that assassination, not suicide, dealt death to 'dolf. Three (slender) clues, he maintains, point to a certain Peter Hencke as the triggerman: a Sudeten German (Czech) by that name escaped from a British POW camp; Dobbs himself claims to have found (then regrettably discarded) a self-portrait the fuhrer dedicated to Hencke; and in Berlin there is a tombstone engraved with the words "To an unknown Czech soldier. Died April 1945." Not much, but to make them stick, Dobbs puts Hencke through a harrowing journey back to Germany, where Goebbels is waiting to extol him as a heroic example of fanatical resistance. Churchill wants to nip in the bud any last stand in the Alps, and that sly old man has just the man to do it. Let's spill no more beans. Evil Nazis still make good copy (a gripping example is "Fatherland" by Robert Harris ), and Dobbs produces an attention-holding blend of the quasi-factual and the quasi-fictional. ((Reviewed Oct. 1, 1992))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1992, American Library Association.)