The Darkest Hour: A Novel, by Tony Schumacher
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The Darkest Hour: A Novel, by Tony Schumacher
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A 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, in which a hardened British detective jeopardizes his own life to save an innocent soul and achieve the impossible—redemption.
London, 1946. The Nazis have conquered the British, and now occupy Great Britain, using brutality and fear to control its citizens. John Henry Rossett, a decorated British war hero and former police sergeant, has been reassigned to the Office of Jewish Affairs. He now answers to the SS, one of the most powerful and terrifying organizations in the Third Reich.
Rossett is a man accustomed to obeying commands, but he’s now assigned a job he did not ask for—and cannot refuse: rounding up Jews for deportation, including men and women he’s known his whole life. But they are not the only victims, for the war took Rossett’s wife and son, and shattered his own humanity.
Then he finds Jacob, a young Jewish child, hiding in an abandoned building, who touches something in Rossett that he thought was long dead.
Determined to save the innocent boy, Rossett takes him on the run, with the Nazis in pursuit. But they are not the only hunters following his trail. The Royalist Resistance and the Communists want him, too. Each faction has its own agenda, and Rossett will soon learn that none of them can be trusted . . . and all of them are deadly.
The Darkest Hour: A Novel, by Tony Schumacher- Amazon Sales Rank: #177139 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-16
- Released on: 2015-06-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.05" w x 5.31" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 464 pages
Review “Schumacher’s assured and atmospheric writing make this a memorable novel. . . . 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)“A stunning debut… The action never stops, as John discovers he can no longer trust his friends. Everyone he knows would give him and the boy up in an instant to save their own hides. . . . A brilliant work for the history and thriller fan.” (Suspense Magazine)“A well-written adventure.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)“A fast-paced roller-coaster journey of twists and turns. . . . Schumacher has created a complex character in Rossett, an emotionally damaged man who trusts no one and cares for nothing. This is a spellbinding, exciting, suspenseful novel. . . . [A] real page-turner.” (Historical Novel Society)“The Darkest Hour is an alternate history, a psychological study, and a thriller all rolled into one fantastic book. . . . A plat that is action-packed and gripping.” (Crimespree Magazine)“The Darkest Hour kicks into overdrive, morphing from a bleak tale of what-might-have-been into a high-adrenaline thriller. . . . Each cliffhanger chapter moves Rossett from the frying pan into a fire. . . . It’s an exhilarating roller-coaster ride.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)“A powerful tale of corrosive suspicion and electrifying danger. . . . The Darkest Hour is an exciting and breathtakingly plausible first novel brimming with suspense and starring a superbly-drawn cast of characters. . . . A cleverly nuanced and convincing thriller.” (Lancaster Evening News (UK))
From the Back Cover
London, 1946. The Nazis have won the war and now occupy Great Britain, using fear to control its citizens. John Henry Rossett, a decorated British war hero, 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 someone 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.
About the Author
Tony Schumacher has written for the Guardian and the Huffington Post, and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio and London's LBC Radio. He has been a policeman, stand-up comedian, bouncer, jeweler, taxi driver, perfume salesman, actor, and garbage collector, among other occupations. He currently lives outside of Liverpool, where he is at work on his second novel.
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Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful. Nazis in the Knightsbridge High Street By Kevin L. Nenstiel Reading Tony Schumacher's debut novel, I couldn't help recalling Children of Men. I mean Alfonso Cuarón's award-winning 2006 movie, not PD James' original 1992 novel, which has a significantly different storyline. Though Schumacher doesn't apishly copy Cuarón, he uses the same journey form, the same rediscovery of self stifled by bureaucratic meaninglessness, that lifted Cuarón above a crowded field. Schumacher could follow suit.Sergeant John Henry Rossett won the Victoria Cross for leading fellow soldiers valiantly out from Dunkirk. But after the Nazis occupied London, Rossett got seconded to the Office of Jewish Affairs. One routine Jewish roundup uncovers a terrified little boy behind the fireplace, awakening the soul Rossett thought murdered when a Resistance bomb killed his son. Now Rossett's fleeing his former SS handlers, trying to offer little Jacob a future.Like Cuarón, Schumacher prefers the journey his hero undertakes to the destination he achieves. Rossett begins as a skillful killer who, bereaved, has fallen into hollow routine. As a Jew catcher, he just follows orders--no excuse, certainly, but orders mean something different when disobedience merits on-the-spot execution. Winston Churchill called Rossett the British Lion; the Nazis' substitute PM, Oswald Mosley, considers him a liability and an embarrassment.But when Rossett finds himself possessing a Jewish child he cannot simply put on a train, the sense of obligation changes him. Jacob's a kid, dammit! A Jew kid, certainly, and one whose very presence on Rossett's arm at a parade rally nearly gets him killed. Rossett quickly learns, however, the lesson Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler also discovered, that killing Jews is easy when they're anonymous crowds. Individuals with names are harder to kill.In Schumacher's world, the British Resistance divides into two camps, the Royalists and the Communists. (I'd've included the IRA, but Schumacher makes a persuasive argument for leaving them out.) Rossett, suddenly alienated from his SS masters, finds both Resistance camps would gladly exploit him; neither will help him survive. With a child under his protection, though, Rossett cannot simply die. Thus he rediscovers how to kill for his cause.Parts of Schumacher's story are shockingly violent. His Nazis, unsurprisingly, care little for individual human lives, permitting others to die for inscrutable ideological purposes. But that atmosphere of violence requires resistors and fugitives to respond likewise. Shockingly visceral torture is common on both sides, and Rossett proves an adept impromptu killer. Schumacher doesn't prettify violence as some writers do; he also doesn't make violence honorable or redemptive.To his credit, Schumacher also avoids the tendency, common in writers handling Nazi themes, to moralize. His principle SS character, Koehler, succeeds because he isn't some Brownshirt from central casting. Koehler appears affable, Anglophilic, and warm to anybody who advances his desires--which are, mainly, to survive. He cares little for Nazi ideology. But his ability to shift abruptly into full SS wrath, without breaking face, makes him truly terrifying.Schumacher creates a world where trust is always provisional, where lies become the unofficial economic currency, and where people rediscover the will to live when they find what they're willing to die for. Despite its historical setting, this novel touches on very real contemporary needs. Maybe today's English-speaking world isn't occupied by Nazis; but Schumacher's depictions of meaningless routine and casual savagery seem mighty familiar from contemporary working-class trenches.Let's not kid here: I haven't felt this excited for a British novel since JK Rowling and China Mieville first made the scene. If Schumacher's writing is derivative, he steals only from the best. If he writes like a filmmaker, it's a film I'd love to see. Even Schumacher's ambiguous ending kept me reading. Because Rossett's problems are our problems; his journey, which never truly ends, is our journey.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. The Darkest Hour By Kat When I think about World War II, it’s hard to imagine any other outcome than the Allies winning. But in The Darkest Hour, Tony Schumacher imagines the opposite – that Germany invaded England, and continued their persecution of the Jewish people, using the British themselves to help ostracize, round up and deport them to the European continent. It’s a shocking, and difficult idea to accept, but The Darkest Hour is scarily convincing in it’s imagination.John Rossett is the damaged hero – his family are dead, he himself suffered greatly during the war, and now he finds himself working for the SS. Outwardly he doesn’t believe that anything terrible is happening to the Jewish people he works to round up and deport back to the European continent, but he obviously has strong suspicions. Despite the fact he was a rather closed character, I found it very easy to like John Rossett. He still retains a strong sense of right and wrong, even if he doesn’t always act immediately on his feelings, and I really liked that he had doubts and changed his mind at certain times – it made him more human than if he had been completely sure and confident.The Darkest Hour also delves into the idea that there would be a resistance in Britain as well, and it’s all very convincingly explained and written, even if some of the lines between right and wrong are also blurred by the resistance themselves.My favourite part of The Darkest Hour however, was the relationship between Rossett and Jacob, the young Jewish boy he finds hiding in a house that has recently been emptied by the Nazis. As they spend more time together, their relationship grows stronger, and more is revealed about Rossett’s own past – I loved the layers that Schumacher had written into the characters.Perhaps my one and only real issue with The Darkest Hour was there is a relationship formed between Rossett and another secondary character quite late in the book that felt a bit awkward and rushed. I didn’t quite feel their connection to each other, especially considering the risks that were being taken.The pacing of The Darkest Hour is quite gradual. Schumacher spends a lot of time setting up the story, exploring various characters and scenarios, all whilst subtly ratcheting up the stakes for the characters and the pace of the plot. By the last quarter of the book, I was in full unputdownable mode, and it wasn’t a disappointment.If an alternative history book sounds like your cup of tea, I can definitely recommend The Darkest Hour. It’s scarily convincing, with characters that it’s impossible not to care about, and a storyline that really made me think.
34 of 42 people found the following review helpful. Average Alternative WWII Thriller! By Bobbewig I won't spend time describing The Darkest Hour's plot other than to say it is set in German-occupied London at the close of WWII and involves a British detective -- now working for the Nazis in the 'Jewish Bureau" -- who jeopardizes his own life to save an innocent Jewish boy and, possibly, achieve redemption. Instead, this review will provide my opinion of the book that, hopefully, will be of help in deciding if it is a book you'll want to read.Overall, I found The Darkest Hour to be a mildly entertaining, mildly thrilling thriller. In my opinion, it had no major problems... BUT it also had no major positives that compelled me to want to read it non-stop. That is, the plot was interesting enough to allow me to finish the book but, on the other hand, there was very little about it that I found to be particularly surprising and/or that kept me from putting the book down for long stretches of time before picking it up again.Further, though the main character and several of the secondary characters were pretty well developed, I never came to care very much about them (other than the boy). And lastly, while The Darkest Hour had its share of action, it rarely made me feel that I was right there experiencing the action as it was happening. Rather, I, as the reader, primarily felt like an "outsider looking in."Bottom Line: I felt The Darkest Hour was good enough to finish but not a book that I'd recommend that you put at the top of your reading list.
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