#BookReview ‘The Counterfeit Candidate’ by Brian Klein

About the book…

Berlin, 30th April, 1945

As the Russian Army closes in on the war-torn City, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun take their own lives. Their bodies are burned and buried in the Reich Chancellery garden, above the Führer’s bunker.

Buenos Aires, 9th January, 2012

Three audacious thieves carry out the biggest safe depository heist in Argentine history, escaping with more than one hundred million dollars’ worth of valuables. Within hours, an encrypted phone call to America triggers a blood-soaked manhunt as the thieves are tracked down, systematically tortured, then murdered.

San Francisco, 18th January, 2012

Senator John Franklin, hailed as the ‘Great Unifier’, secures the Republican Presidential nomination and seems destined for the Oval Office. Despite the sixty-seven year interval and a span of thirteen thousand miles, these events are indelibly linked.

Chief Inspector Nicolas Vargas of the Buenos Aires Police Department and Lieutenant Troy Hembury of the LAPD are sucked into a dark political conspiracy concealing an incredible historical truth stretching from the infamous Berlin bunker to Buenos Aires and to Washington, which threatens the very heart and soul of American democracy.

My thanks to Safia at Midas PR for the blogtour invite, and Level Best Publishers for the gifted review copy of ‘The Counterfeit Candidate’ which is out in paperback from 8th July!

This is not my usual genre of choice, political thrillers, but I am trying to branch out this year and embrace the things I don’t normally read, so I jumped at the chance to look into the debut book from Brian Klein.

The novel is made of very short chapters which go back and forth between 1945 and 2012, 2 pivotal points on the global scale as the race for presidential candidacy takes on a whole new mean based on what is thought to have happened in Hitler’s bunker.

The conspiracy theory has run amok in the age of the internet where anyone with a laptop and access to Photoshop can deep fake news, make things seem real which really couldn’t be, and, the reverse is true, the more outlandish the theory,the less likely it is to require substantiation.

This one tackles the idea, widely held as plausible, that Hitler and Eva Braun committed committed suicide alongside his dog , Blondie. However, what if the only actual casualty was the dog? What if this was an elaborate plan, begun when the war was turning against the Germans, to spirit them away on the spoils of Nazi treasure to Buenos Aires?

And then, totally out of nowhere, three bank robbers using a well worn trope from Holmesian times onwards, dig a tunnel under a unoccupied ‘closed for refurbishment’ cafe into a bank vault. And steal as many safe deposit boxes as they possibly can. Including, proof that Hitler never died.

The race is now on to get this information back as the contents of the locker are owned by one Richard Franklin, whose son, John, is running for President with followers viewing him as the new JFK.

It is tense, fast paced and well researched, you would never guess that the writer created this in lockdown, it has a sense of validity as if he travelled to and absorbed each of the city’s nuances during it’s inception.

The story is very cinematic and reads like a made for tv movie expanded into a book format, so I think it is fair to say that it could one day be viewed on television. Again, I have to say that this book is not my usual read, and maybe I am not as switched onto the genre as others who are would be. I think overall it is a decent read which will keep you going through the night as you wonder if Franklin’s team will get to the right robber’s hiding place or whether the police will.

The story shows its hand pretty early on, so the element of surprise is lost to some extent and I didn’t really care for the scenes of Hitler and Braun setting up home in Buenos Aires, I think the reader could have put this together without those passages. However, it is a decent story which explores the long term consequences of the ‘What if?’ conspiracy theory is taken to a , to me, very plausible conclusion.

About the author…

Brian Klein is a novelist and award winning Television Director, with over twenty-five years’ experience in the industry.

His work regularly appears on Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC and Sky.

Amongst his directing credits are twenty-five seasons of the iconic car show, “Top Gear” and five seasons of ”A League Of Their Own-Road Trip”, Sky One’s highest rating entertainment show.

Links-https://www.brianklein.tv/

Twitter @midaspr @levelbestbooks