The Madagaskar Plan

Starred review from June 1, 2015
Saville doesn’t sacrifice characterization for action or plot in his imaginative sequel to 2013’s The Afrika Reich, a thriller in which the Nazis win WWII. In May 1940, British forces fail to escape Dunkirk. Churchill resigns, and the new prime minister makes peace with Germany, which defeats the Soviet Union in 1943. With Europe securely under its sway, Germany establishes an empire in Africa. Instead of exterminating the Jews, Hitler has the majority shipped to Madagascar. In 1952, former British soldier Burton Cole searches for his love, Madeleine Cranley, whose husband has just learned that she’s carrying another man’s child. The way Saville interweaves this story line with that of Germans intent on conquering those parts of Africa not yet in their control is masterly. Meanwhile, the Jews imprisoned on Madagascar desperately try to draw a neutral America to their cause. Saville’s attention to detail is manifest throughout, as in a passing reference to the impact on the British economy of German territorial conquests. Agent: Farley Chase, Chase Literary Agency.

June 1, 2015
Set against a world dominated by an undefeated Third Reich, the Freudian blood feud between mercenary Burton Cole and Oberstgruppenfuhrer Walter Hochburg rages into Madagascar.Dropping in back story tidbits to bring new readers up to speed, Saville (The Afrika Reich, 2013) opens here after his debut focused on the Cole-engineered attack on Hochburg's African headquarters, Schadelplatz. Both escape colossal carnage, but Hochburg must cope with a Kongo-wide war-Europeans and Africans have allied and rebelled. Cole returns to London hoping to find Madeleine Cranley, a Jewish Austrian refugee who's pregnant with his child, but the fact that he's lost a hand pales when he discovers that he's lost Madeleine, with whom he had a passionate connection because the "wounded, the incomplete, seek each other out." When her husband, a British government official, discovered her infidelity, Madeleine was transported to Madagaskar, Hitler's "grand reservation" for Western Europe's Jews. Madagaskar is Auschwitz writ large. Most of the bloody action takes place there as Cole pursues Madeleine and in turn is pursued by Hochburg. Saville has the English flair for language-"brogues obese with mud"-and his alternate history (there's a synopsis of the Reich's actual Madagaskar-Projekt) gives the bad guys jet airliners, armed hovercraft, and helicopter gunships in 1953. Saville posits a Vanilla Jew Rebellion complicated by Judische Polizei and further debauched by an SS that "was riven with jealousy." The (overly long) narrative runs nonstop, rampant with rivers of blood and genocidal murder, ending in double duplicity when Cole learns the motive for Madeleine's exile and the Jewish guerrillas discover The Ark, repository of "their records, the island's last safeguard," has been destroyed. Cole and Hochburg flee the island, the latter with Jewish physicists capable of constructing a superweapon, assuring a third volume. Sophisticated alternative history drenched in relentless R-rated violence.

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Starred review from May 15, 2015
In 2013's The Afrika Reich, set in an alternate version of 1952 (one in which the Nazis were victorious in WWII), British soldier-for-hire Burton Cole was sent into the German-ruled Kongo to assassinate its Nazi governor, Walter Hochburg. A startling family connection between Cole and Hochburg was revealed, and the book ended with Cole on his way back to England to reunite with his married lover, determined to find out why he was sent on a mission that was supposed to fail. This rousing sequel picks up soon after; Hochburg's troops are under siege by a well-organized rebellion, and Cole reaches England only to find that his lover has vanished, apparently spirited away (or even worse?) by her jealous husband, who happens to be the man who sent Cole on his disastrous mission. Can Cole find out what happened to the missing woman? Or will he be distracted by the Germans, whose final solution is nearing completion, as the large-scale transportation of Jews to Madagaskar begins? This vividly realized alternatehistory thriller, set against a historical backdrop that is both entirely fictional and eerily plausible, will intrigue WWII buffs and fans of Harry Turtledove and other alternate-history masters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)