THE WEREWOLF TRACE

Combine Nazi-hunting and ghost-hunting and what do you get? What you get is a big improvement for John Gardner, who has spent too much time spoofing James Bond (the Boysie Oakes series) and ripping off Conan Doyle (Return of Moriarty). Not that Werewolf is a masterpiece, but it will grab you when Vincent Cooling, a British Germany-specialist with a distaste for the "clandestine side" of Intelligence, lands an extremely clandestine assignment: determine whether or not a mild-mannered furniture exporter named Gotterson is the son of Joseph Goebbels—was the body in Hitler's bunker a substitute?—and whether or not Mr. Gotterson is now part of neo-Nazi doings in England. Meanwhile (the chapters alternate), Gotterson, wife, and baby daughter are having problems (non-political) of their own; their newly-bought house one hour outside of London seems to be haunted (night sounds, disappearing sugar) by the ghost of the previous owner's baby—a baby who was beaked to death by a sparrow hawk. With clean, understated forward drive, Gardner's in full control of the converging tensions, and reluctant, insolent Cooling is just the right agent to spearhead this ambivalent investigation. Like everything that leads up to it, the denouement will have your feelings tightly twined even while your brain demands some answers that just aren't there.