John J. Le Beau

John LeBeau's "Collision of Evil" tries to marry two of the world's great fears: Nazis and Islamic terrorists, and it seems a pretty forced concept.

A young American hiking in Bavaria is murdered when he blunders into an Alpine cave holding decades-old crates. Who killed him, and what was in the crates? The mystery goes back to the waning days of World War II when an SS officer is ordered to transport a shipment of crates from Berlin to the Bavarian alps. Do the crates contain gold? Official papers? Or something else. The American's brother, a CIA caseworker, travels to Germany to bring home his brother's body and to involve himself in the local police murder investigation. It turns out that the crates contain the components of a chemical weapon, which have been appropriated by a cell of Muslim terrorists. What is their target? The book is a race against time, with the terrorists attempting to complete and use their weapon of mass destruction before they are discovered by the CIA/German investigators.

This is a very uneven book. Sometimes the dialogue crackles and sparks; other times it is leaden, particularly when the author engages in exposition - characters describing to each other what we had already experienced in real-time as readers. The book is also replete with stereotypes, whether Nazis, German revelers, fanatical Muslims, or alternately clever and obtuse investigators.

There's plenty of action and rushing around, but it doesn't amount to very much. I'd call this a good beach read.… (meer)