CHASE ME, CATCH NOBODY!

by Erik Christian Haugaard ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 1980

Fourteen in 1937, Erik is one of several Danish schoolboys on an educational visit to Germany. He soon links up with Nikolai, a boy from another class traveling with his, who holds forth with political analysis picked up from his Communist stevedore father. ""I am not very political,"" Erik mumbles, though his father, a wealthy importer, had gone so far in seeing him off as to point to a travel-poster swastika with the words ""if I were you, I wouldn't believe too much in that."" Then on the ferry to Germany, a shabby looking man thrusts a package at Erik who is to keep it until they get through customs--or deliver it to an address in Hamburg ""if you don't see me again."" The man is marched off by the Gestapo on entering Germany, and Erik determines almost instinctively to deliver the package, which turns out to contain 50 Danish passports. An encounter in a Jewish neighborhood in their first German city furthers his resolve, and for a while his biggest problem is keeping a low profile for his mission's sake, while Nikolai insists on playing attention-getting pranks to taunt the Nazis. Much of the interest so far derives from Haugaard's delightfully sharp, subtle portrayal, not only of the two boys' behavior, but also of the various shades of reaction to the Nazis on the part of the Danish boys and their two teachers. In the second half of the story, the characterization, though vivid, becomes broader, and the accent shifts to suspense. Erik does deliver the package, but later sees its recipients arrested. He is himself caught in the web of an odd, underworld lot of sinister young Nazis. He meets a half-Jewish girl his age who is also in their clutches. And, reunited toward the end with Nikolai, he smuggles the girl into Denmark in a leaking rowboat with German police in hot pursuit. It's a bit disappointing that the earlier moral-political-psychological facets become mere background to an international adventure. However, as in many such adventures, if readers accept the villains' predilection for circuitous maneuvers and the hero's choice of a lone and dangerous route, they'll be taken along on a breathless chase to the end.

Pub Date: April 23, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION