Cheap Hart's War (Book) (John Katzenbach) Price
CHEAP-PRICE.NET ’s Cheap Price
$5.99
Here at Cheap-price.net we have Hart's War at a terrific price. The real-time price may actually be cheaper — click “Buy Now” above to check the live price at Amazon.com.
The first thing that former law student Tommy Hart does after his B-25 is shot down and he--the only survivor--is captured, is to fill out a form for the International Red Cross, telling his family he's alive and requesting, under "Special Items Needed," a copy of Edmund's Principles of Common Law. Amazingly, the book is waiting when he arrives at Stalag Luft Thirteen in the Bavarian woods. Hart soon puts it to good use, defending (with the help of two other prisoners, a former London barrister and a Canadian police detective) the prickly, proud Lieutenant Lincoln Scott when he is charged with killing a racist and corrupt fellow prisoner. The Nazis, especially a resident SS observer, have their own reasons for wanting the trial to be seen as a fair one, and it takes place against the backdrop of a planned mass escape.
Katzenbach deftly balances a dozen major characters with credible scenes of legal and extra-legal action. His previous thrillers, available in paperback, include Day of Reckoning, In the Heat of the Summer, Just Cause, The Shadow Man, State of Mind, and The Traveler. --Dick Adler
| AUTHOR: | John Katzenbach |
| CATEGORY: | Book |
| MANUFACTURER: | Ballantine Books (Trd) |
| ISBN: | B00008S7V8 |
| FEATURES: | Bargain Price |
| TYPE: | World War, 1939-1945, Prisoners and prisons, German, Fiction, Americans, Germany, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Fiction - Psychological Suspense, Suspense, War, Bargain |
| MEDIA: | Hardcover |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
Related Products
Customer Reviews of Hart's War
A Decent Attempt at Stalag 17 Meets To Kill A Mockingbird! Hart's War is an intelligent good read. It is a court room mystery set in a WWII POW camp in Germany.
I enjoyed the story and the characters very much. The mystery itself was OK and the resolution of it is OK, not great, not overally memoriable but for genre the book itself is pretty good. The racial aspect of the book is again interesting but again not as good as it could be. The idea was there and some of the execution was there, but its not to the level of a To Kill a Mockingbird or even A Time To Kill.
I will not claim to be any sort of WWII POW camp expert. But one of the problems I had with the book was the whole "good german" guard and warden of the camp. To me it gave the book, despite its seriousness, an element of Hogan's heroes. I know that all Germans were not Nazis but two of the main German characters in this book were a little to nice. Also the idea of the camp Gestapo officer testifying and answering questions at a tribunal run by POWs was almost laughable.
But maybe I am making too much of what this book is. The book is a good paperback mystery novel. In fact it is above average. But the history teacher in me wanted a little more. Like The War of the Rats which I read before this, I felt this was a good book but not up to the potential book it could have been. Both are good WWII paperbacks for a nice day at the park of the beach but in the end they are forgetable books that will eventually be passed on to a friend or donated to the library.
a few good men and a few bad ones, too
At a POW camp for Allied airmen, a prisoner is murdered. Suspicion immediately falls on Lincoln Scott, the only black man in the camp and a target for the dead man's racism. Bomber navigator and law student Tommy Hart is ordered to defend Scott in what is clearly going to be little more than a polite form of lynching. But as Hart begins his investigations, he soon realises that nothing in the camp is what it seems...
This is a superb twist on the legal-thriller genre, the twist being of course that all the protagonists are captives. By confining himself to such a restricted world, Katzenbach must rely on storytelling ability - there's no chance for sex scenes, chase scenes, or various other stock distractions. He succeeds admirably; it's been a while since I read a story with such good pacing and tension. (Conversely, the Stalag environment means that other typical genre things such as characters creeping round in the dead of night to find evidence make a lot more sense).
What lifts Hart's War further above the genre are the characters and the tensions between them: while the basic theme is concerned with racism, little else could be considered black-and-white. Most intriguing are the Germans, who may be The Enemy but aren't necessarily the "bad guys". There are several sides playing off each other, and much of the intrigue (and entertainment) comes from trying to decide who gains from what. Topping it all off are some honest musings on heroism and courage.
Far fetched
There are almost too many clichés in this book to make it believable, but it seems that the author received most of his material from his father who was a WWII veteran. I would like to know how much of the Hart's War is true form a WWII prisoner point of view. The bumbling Germans remind me at times of Hogan's Heroes, hiding radios in coffee cans and repeatedly shouting, "There has never been an escape from Luftwaffe 13". However, it is very interesting to learn of the day to day lives of WWII prisoners in a German camp, so the book is not a complete waste.