A grim alternate history is portrayed, in which 1946 sees
the SS carrying out the job of policing in London. John
Henry Rossett, an ordinary copper, has no choice but to
co-
operate with the victors. Just as they did in every
conquered European country, the Germans have commandeered
the best of everything and continue to carry out abhorrent
activities against minority populations. Rationing has
left
everything in short supply, and the weather has been
bitter. This really is THE DARKEST HOUR.
Through Rossett's experience we view the surrendered
country and learn how the situation came about. The German
Army managed to take Moscow, after invading Britain was
enough to turn the course of the war. Edward the Eighth,
an
extremely right-wing personality, is King, who submitted
to
invasion. Oswald Mosely, the leader of the reviled Fascist
Party in England before the war, is established in Downing
Street as a figurehead. So, what is life like? Maybe you'd
prefer not to know. Certainly, it makes disturbing
reading.
Clearing out a house of its arrested occupants, Rossett
comes across a young boy and a hoard of gold sovereigns.
If
it comes to saving one or the other, he knows which he'd
prefer. But the child is destined for a hellish fate, and
police cannot take bribes. Unless he can think of a way
out
of the situation, Rossett will lose both. Desperate times
make desperate men, and Rossett is both hero and antihero
as the action becomes openly violent.
I was unsurprised to meet the Resistance, who are just as
fraught as their antagonists are brutal. Their counter
measures have harmed innocents as well as Germans. The
wider economic situation is glanced at but the focus
remains on the gritty day-to-day as men and women try to
survive. Certainly, in pre-war days, some upper class
English saw fascism as the force which would stand against
the spreading communism that threatened to remove them
from
wealth and influence. Closing eyes and ears to reports of
atrocities, they forged family and business links with
wealthy Germans. So the alternative future foreseen by
Tony
Schumacher in THE DARKEST HOUR is not impossible, just
unthinkable.
In this crackling, highly imaginative thriller debut in
the
vein of W.E.B. Griffin and Philip Kerr, set in
German-occupied London at the close of World War II, a
hardened, dispirited British detective jeopardizes his own
life to save someone else and achieve the impossible—some
kind of redemption
London, 1946. The Nazis have won the war and now occupy
Great Britain, using brutality and fear to control its
citizens. They even use it to control those who work for
them. John Henry Rossett, a decorated British war hero and
former police sergeant, is one of those unlucky souls.
He's
a man accustomed to obeying commands, but he's now
assigned
a job he didn't ask for and knows he cannot refuse:
rounding
up Jews for deportation, including men and women he's
known
his whole life. Robbed of his family by a Resistance bomb,
and robbed of his humanity by the work he is forced to do,
fate suddenly presents Rossett with an unexpected
challenge
that could change everything. He finds a boy hiding in an
abandoned building and is faced with a momentous decision—
to
do something or to look the other way. Yet whatever
Rossett
does, he will be pushed into a place where he could
endanger
all he holds dear.
Played out against a city in ruin, a place divided between
the conquered and the conquerors, The Darkest Hour is a
tense, driving adventure thriller, a fascinating alternate
history, and the unforgettable story of a man who will be
broken—or be given a completely new lease on life.
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