THE THIRD MAN

The star couple in Cooper’s series investigates a Nazi plot that may still be in motion today.

The first timeline of Cooper’s novel is set in Germany near the end of World War II. The SS recruits a German American scientist named Walter Muller, and they plan to infiltrate a research facility in Maine to use DNA to build a “superior” race and a Fourth Reich. Shortly after Muller’s arrival in Maine, he meets and marries another conspirator, Catherine Freeman. In the present day, after some Nazi artifacts turn up, college science professor Brad Parker works with his romantic partner, police Lt. Karen Richmond, to interview with a man named Mark Carlson, who may know something about the Nazis’ interest in genetic engineering. Carlson is a former SS officer who defected and became an FBI agent. He has reason to believe his lover came to the U.S. during the war as a spy to conduct experiments with DNA, hoping to create an Aryan race. Brad, deeply skeptical of the plot, notes, “That’s impossible. How could anyone in the forties imagine the advances that would eventually take place in molecular biology?” The novel then flashes back to the 1950s, when scientists discovered the double helix structure of DNA, which seems to help Catherine and Muller in their pursuit. The two parallel stories continue to develop: We see Catherine and Muller in the past studying DNA with the hopes of using it to build a new race, and Brad and Karen investigating that research. A large part of the book is told from the point of view of Nazis in the past, including their experiments, which gives the novel its ominous mood. This adds some needed tension because there doesn’t feel like there’s much of a threat in the present storyline: Everyone who played a part in the original plot is either elderly or dead. Still, Brad and Karen share a lot of witty banter, and watching them unravel the plot is compelling enough to keep the reader turning the pages.

A complex but readable Nazi-themed thriller.