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Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Pottinger, S. 2003 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Fourth Procedure comes a riveting thriller about a deadly virus, born of the past, that threatens to destroy the present. The Last Nazi seamlessly weaves genetics, terrorism, and the very human struggle of right and wrong into a terrifying and unforgettable story.
Melissa Gale is an attractive, ambitious lawyer and investigator for the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department's "Nazi Hunters." Her quarry, known only by the name "Adalwolf," was the brilliant young protg of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Butcher of Auschwitz. Presumed dead for almost fifty years, Adalwolf has suddenly reappeared in the United States to take the lives of three people in a chilling, unusual way.
Melissa stalks Adalwolf to bring him to justice, only to discover that he is actually stalking her. She has something he wants: a personal medical history that holds the key to his plan for the ultimate crime. Using a deadly biological virus born of the genetic projects started in the Nazi labs, Adalwolf is about to unleash the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Melissa Gale and the baby she is carrying could be the key to his success.
Trapped in his nightmare scheme, she is forced to fight for her life. The tension builds unbearably as Melissa's race to save her baby and stop Adalwolf from carrying out his plan forces her to confront the boundaries of good and evil---not only in him, but in herself.
Author Notes
Stan Pottinger is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He practiced law in California and served as director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and as assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice, in Washington, D.C. He has argued four cases before the Supreme Court. He is the New York Times bestselling author of The Fourth Procedure and A Slow Burning. Mr. Pottinger has three grown children and lives in South Salem, New York.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
It's difficult to come up with a fresh Nazi scenario without resorting to the cloning gambit, but Pottinger (The Fourth Procedure; A Slow Burning) succeeds admirably in this hair-raising thriller. His villain, Adalwolf, the 16-year-old foster son of Dr. Josef Mengele, joins the short list of fiction's baddest bad boys from the very first sentence. The setting is Auschwitz, Christmas Eve, 1944: "He heard a soft voice, a little girl's voice, singing quietly in the operating room. When it stopped, Adalwolf told her to keep singing, there was no need to be afraid, everything was going to be fine." The reader understands that nothing from here on out is going to be fine. Fifty-eight years later, gutsy Melissa Gale, a lawyer for the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, joins a SWAT team as they blast through the door of an apartment where the elderly Adalwolf is hiding. Melissa has been hunting this particular Nazi for five years, and he's taunted her throughout the chase. Adalwolf has murdered three people in the process of cooking up a deadly virus that threatens to kill every Jew in the world. The concept of a designer virus dedicated to wiping out one particular ethnic or racial group has been fielded, but Pottinger's take is by far the best of the bunch. Add a kidnapped child, more cold-blooded murder and a pregnant heroine who may be carrying the deadly plague along with her baby, and you've got a lethal prescription for a stay-up-all-night read. Agents, Joni Evans and Owen Laster. (Aug.) Forecast: St. Martin's is laying on a four-city author tour and a national radio advertising campaign to get the word out on this one. That plus Pottinger's past readership should push him onto some lists. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Chutzpah: a no-good Nazi offing a nice Jewish boy, then swiping his identity for over half a century. Adalwolf is the name that Nazi-hunter Melissa Gale knows him by, the monster she's been chasing for five fruitless years. He frustrates and embitters her. Nor does he do her career a lot of good. Early in the story, an Adalwolf misadventure leads to Melissa's suspension from a high-level job in the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations. Additional dismal things she knows about Adalwolf: he's cunning, arrogant, vindictive, devilishly smart, and elusive as hell. Most important, she knows that he was the foster son of Dr. Josef Mengeles, infamous for the "procedures" he performed on Jewish inmates of Auschwitz before sending them on to Crematorium V. As a teenaged monster of 16, Adalwolf was the diabolical doctor's eager surgical assistant. What Melissa doesn't know about Adalwolf--though the reader does--is that for 56 years he's been masquerading as Professor Ben Ben-Levi, world-class fertility specialist and father-figure/mentor to Melissa, who's been trying desperately to get pregnant. She adores gentle Ben-Levi, trusts him, depends on him--and then is shockingly betrayed by him at a time when she could hardly have been more vulnerable. But for Adalwolf, the time is propitious indeed, because, with her unwitting help, his wicked secret agenda can at last be activated. No less virulent than he was at Auschwitz, he plans to launch a Jewish plague: a killer virus engineered to be selective--with Melissa's baby, like Rosemary's, to be the incubator of unspeakable evil. Aroused, Melissa goes on the attack: mother versus monster, a vengeful, fire-breathing mother ready, willing, and able to play by monster rules. Throughout, there's a scattering of good white-knuckle moments, but with Pottinger, ever the overplotter (A Slow Burning, 2000, etc.), more continues to be less. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Pottinger, author of The Fourth Procedure (1995), combines the promising science of in vitro fertilization with the heinous technologies of germ warfare and eugenics to produce a thriller with a ruthless villain and nonstop twists and turns that will keep readers on edge until the very end. Melissa Gale, a lawyer and agent with an investigative unit of the FBI, is on the trail of the mysterious Adalwolf, a former assistant to Joseph Mengele, who aided in experiments on concentration camp prisoners. For Melissa it's not just a job, it's a personal mission because her grandmother died in a concentration camp. When she and her partner botch the swat team operation, their careers are put in jeopardy, and the elusive Nazi is emboldened to continue with his plot to develop a killer virus. On quasi-hiatus from the investigation, Melissa concentrates on reviving her marriage and getting pregnant, but she can't stop profiling the Nazi killer. Her compulsion to find Adalwolf and--unknown to her--his fascination with her put the investigator and the Nazi on a collision course that endangers those who are close to her. This is a fast-paced, absorbing novel that tackles difficult social and medical issues in the context of an enthralling thriller. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2003 Booklist
Library Journal Review
A little too au courant for comfort: Melissa Gale, a lawyer with the Office of Special Investigations, is tracking a Mengele prot?g? named Adalwolf who has resurfaced after 50 years, ready to unleash his weapon of mass destruction: a virus. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.