The Counterfeit Candidate

TV director Klein debuts with an intriguing series launch that blends police procedural and alternate history. An audacious bank robbery in Buenos Aires nets the thieves hundreds of millions of dollars, but a weathered briefcase nabbed from a safety deposit box holds the greatest treasure. The deposit box belongs to Richard Franklin, CEO of one of the world’s wealthiest drug companies, whose son, California senator John Franklin, is the Republican candidate and front-runner in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Richard’s employee, ex-mercenary Matias Paz, tracks down and kills the thieves one by one in pursuit of the briefcase, which once belonged to Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler’s personal secretary. Chief Insp. Nicolas Vargas of the Buenos Aires Police Department finds the briefcase first and discovers its dark secrets: irrefutable proof that Hitler not only survived WWII, but the soon-to-be-elected president of the United States is his grandson, and it’s all part of a Nazi plot decades in the making. Klein takes a fascinating what-if scenario familiar from Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil and Irving Wallace’s The Seventh Secret and brings it to vivid life with slimy villains and an investigator worth rooting for. Readers will look forward to the next installment. (May)