Eagle Ascending

Whitfield’s ambitious thriller effectively eases readers into its fantastic premise with a prosaic opening. NYPD narcotics officer Joe Krueger loses a drug dealer he’s chasing on a Manhattan street when a bomb goes off at a nearby Jewish museum, killing almost a hundred people. Krueger’s stunned when the federal task force probing the explosion identifies a suspect who’s a dead ringer for the cop’s grandfather, German general Wolfgang Andreas Krueger, who died in 1951. The situation gets weirder when the FBI’s facial recognition software determines that the bomber is almost certainly the supposedly deceased general. Krueger’s sidelined from the inquiry, but perseveres, only to learn from his mother that her father headed a group of researchers ordered by Hitler to find Christian relics. The group’s ultimate target was the True Cross, which the Führer believed could confer immortality. Whitfield keeps the action brisk as Krueger goes rogue to find his criminal relative and the truth. Fans of Daniel Easterman’s Spear of Destiny will be entertained. (Self-published)