The Darkest Hour

British author Schumacher makes his debut with this uneven alternative history set in Nazi-occupied Britain in 1946. Det. Sgt. John Henry Rossett, whom Churchill once dubbed “The British Lion” for holding up “half a Panzer brigade on his own for almost a week” and other heroic feats in France, has for the last two years personally supervised the rounding-up of thousands of Jews in London. He’s tormented by his role in fulfilling the SS’s cruel directives and haunted by the deaths of his family in a bombing—and by how far he’s fallen from his days as a copper, known as the “straightest man in the Met.” He gets a shot at redemption when a tip from one of his detainees, Israel Galkoff, leads him to where Galkoff’s grandson, Jacob, is in hiding and Rossett resolves to save the boy. Readers should be prepared for less sophisticated world-building than can be found in similar books by Len Deighton and Robert Harris. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Associates. (Oct.)