Blood Eagle

Retired U.S. Army colonel and law professor Smith makes an awkward fiction debut with a thriller set mainly in 1960s West Germany. Maj. Tom Cooper, U.S. Army, and Capt. Simon Berwick, of the British SAS, join forces to track down a neo-Nazi movement called the Fatherland Party after terrorist attacks take the lives of their wives and children. Desensitized by their loss, the pair easily take to their new purpose and mercilessly cut down their targets in an effort to discover the secret behind Fatherland, which is somehow connected with the mysterious death of Hitler's mistress Geli Raubal in 1931. Jarring anachronisms, like a Muslim terrorist blowing up a 747 over the Atlantic in 1965, don't help a predictable plot and an implausible premise. (Oct.)