The Afrika Reich

Starred review from December 3, 2012
Saville’s tremendously satisfying debut, an alternative-history thriller that supposes there was no WWII, will please fans of Frederick Forsyth and Len Deighton. In 1952, nine years after the Casablanca Conference that divided (“cleaved” was Churchill’s word) Africa between Britain and Germany, allowing Germany to regain the colonies it lost under the Treaty of Versailles, retired assassin Burton Cole is hoping to start a new and tranquil existence in Sussex. But those hopes are scuttled by an offer he can’t refuse. A Rhodesian, Donald Ackerman, informs him that a man Cole believed dead, Nazi Walter Hochburg, is alive and serving as the governor-general of the German colony of Kongo. Cole, who blames Hochburg for his mother’s disappearance, hopes to learn the truth of the circumstances from the Nazi before taking his revenge. Saville gets everything right—providing suspenseful action sequences, logical but enthralling plot twists, a fully thought through imaginary world, and characters with depth. Agent: Jonathan Pegg, Jonathan Pegg Literary.

December 15, 2012
In Saville's alternate history, Great Britain pursued peace with the Nazis after Operation Dynamo--the Miracle of Dunkirk--failed and left a quarter of a million soldiers captured. Churchill resigned. Lord Halifax became prime minister. In 1952, there exists the Council of New Europe, an uneasy alliance of Germany, countries subjugated by Hitler and an isolated Great Britain. Vichy France, Italy, Spain and Britain retain some colonies, but the heart of Africa is ruled by the Reich, where the SS enforces the Windhuk Decree, with Africans either massacred or sent to labor or death camps. Conquered Slavs and imported ethnic Germans are left to exploit Africa's riches for the Reich. Burton Cole, Foreign Legion veteran, is approached by a Mr. Ackerman, representing diamond-mining interests. Cole is offered riches to lead a mercenary team to assassinate SS Obberstgruppenfuhrer Walter Hochburg, governor-general of the Kongo. Cole cares neither for money nor politics. Cole only wants Hochburg dead, but not before Hochburg reveals the fate of Cole's mother, once a missionary. In the SS fortress of Schadeplatz, Cole believes he has finally found justice, but the apparent death of the Nazi at knife-point is the mere beginning of a bloody saga of cruelty and corruption, double-dealing and deception. There are gory battles at jungle airfields, in tunnels vital to the Pan African Autobahn and in Angola. Mercenaries are lost one by one. Only Patrick Whaler, Cole's American sidekick and former Legionnaire chef, and a few African resistencia are left to fight, and all of them absorb enough punishment to wipe out regiments while they leave Nazis and collaborators shot, stabbed, bombed and buried. Hochburg, messianic orphan of a massacred German missionary family, is a worthy villain, right up to paving a square with human skulls and burning prisoners at the stake. The realpolitik seems credible, and while some alternate historical factoids seem far-fetched--a multilane autobahn across Africa in 10 years? supersonic jets?--they don't overshadow the dark and gruesome narrative dynamic. A skin-of-the-teeth escape at the end foreshadows a series.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2012

Alternative World War II history: the victorious Germans have divided up the Continent with an unhappily quiescent Britain and have swallowed up much of Africa as well, with iron-fisted Walter Hochburg in charge. As 1952 rolls around and more horror threatens, former assassin Burton Cole is asked to eliminate Hochburg. An Economist Best Book of the Year.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Saville's debut novel makes an energetic leap into alternate history. Britain's 1940 Dunkirk evacuation fails, and Lord Halifax and Hitler negotiate a peace that includes German control of a vast swath of Africa, from the Sahara to the Indian Ocean. Fast-forward to 1952, and Walter Hochburg, the psychopathic governor-general of Kongo, is building autobahns through the jungle paved with the ground-up corpses of Nazi soldiers (to plant Nazi spirit in Africa's very soil). A small team of mercenaries led by Burton Cole, who has a personal score to settle with Hochburg, is hired to assassinate the governor-general, but the mercs are betrayed and pursued relentlessly by Hochburg and hordes of fanatical SS, providing Saville more opportunities for gun battles, carnage, and barbarity than most Hollywood action films. His alternate history is imaginative and superficially plausible; an author's note cites actual Nazi interest in Africa and its resources. Many readers who study WWII and the Nazis might question this scenario, but, if they can suspend disbelief, they'll enjoy the wild, running battle against contemporary history's greatest villains.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)