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.
Praise for the book:
"Mr. Schumacher's assured and atmospheric writing make this a memorable novel, reminiscent of writers from John Buchan to Ken Follett, and of directors from Alfred Hitchcock to Carol Reed. But it's the characters in The Darkest Hour—from the scene-stealing child to the SS secretary whose double (triple?) agent duties are provoking an identity crisis—who make the reader care what happens." ~Wall Street Journal
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