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Stan Pottinger is yet another American lawyer making a few extra quid through writing thrillers. Reputed to be a shining light in his day job -- he argued four cases before the Supreme Court -- I could find no mention of his perhaps turning to writing as a full time career. THE LAST NAZI is Pottinger's third novel, following a medical thriller, THE FOURTH PROCEDURE and A SLOW BURNING. The prologue begins, horrifically enough, in Auschwitz in 1944, with the murder of a little Jewish girl. Teenaged Adalwolf soothes the child in preparation for her death while another Jewish child Ben Ben-Zevi waits, with chocolate, to be called to help with the soothing process. He clutches a pendant entrusted to him by an older girl but it proves to be his downfall. The action then jumps forward to 2002 where beautiful (of course) Jewess Melissa Gale and FBI agent Harris Johnson believe they have tracked down the infamous Adalwolf, the last Nazi. They don't quite manage to trap Adalwolf but somehow engineer the inglorious slaughter of a US war hero. Both are suspended, but in the best tradition of crime fiction, continue their pursuit of the infamous killer. But wait! There's more! Melissa desperately wants a child. Her biological clock is sounding the alarm. She has problems with her uterus but can they be overcome so she can fall pregnant? Watch that, that is, this, space! Because of her suspension from duty she is able to settle temporarily in Miami with her journalist husband David. There they go through the humiliating and difficult fertility treatment which they hope will more readily 'take' in Melissa's tension-ridden body. Melissa's best friend is Dr Benjamin Ben-Zevi, who has told Melissa of the horrors of Auschwitz and how he was liberated from the camp despite having been Adalwolf's assistant. He helps her in her quest to become pregnant and, when a disaster masterminded by Adalwolf strikes, takes her to live with him. But somehow Melissa's proposed pregnancy will be used by Adalwolf to perpetrate Hitler's Final Solution! *Gasp*. Is the Jewish race doomed? Oops. Sorry. Nearly got carried away there. There is a cover quote from Tess Gerritsen in which she says: "The Last Nazi is an unstoppable ride with hairpin twists and turns." It is a great pity that Mr. Pottinger didn't know how to stop it, nor that he is unfamiliar with the concept of less being more. Have you, Dear Reader, ever watched a movie so bad that it is good? One (such as, perhaps Plan Nine From Outer Space ) that leaves you gasping for breath -- because you are laughing so hard? The melodrama in Pottinger's third novel brings it to that level. I would not mind making a wager that Stanley, as a child, adored Saturday afternoon matinees and the odd Indiana Jones epic. Oh! And possibly old reruns of The Perils Of Pauline. How else would you apostrophise a victim secured helplessly on a step where the inexorably rising high tide will drown her at 12.57 am precisely? Just in case, too, that the reader hasn't got the idea that Adalwolf, the Last Nazi, is a Thoroughly Bad Man, as he dispatches a Jewish man, he hisses at him 'Goodbye, Christ killer!' Do these incidents help to give you some idea of the quality of the book? The author is reported to have a fourth novel in the works. He thinks it is a thriller. Perhaps he will be good enough, next time, to create characters with character, rather than comicstrip heroes. Perhaps, too, he will have the good sense to increase readers' suspense by minimising the number of dangerous situations and keeping the danger on a more subtle level. Then again, perhaps the gentleman simply can't help himself.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, April 2004
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