HITLER’S TIME MACHINE
By Robert F. Dorr
ISBN # 978-0-9863200-0-2
292 pages
The fun of any new pulp adventure is you never know exactly
what you are going to get. Oh, sure, you can make a few educated guesses based
on your knowledge of the author’s history and the book’s theme, but that’s
still pretty much surface data. It doesn’t really delve deep enough to reveal
anything of significance until you start reading. That being said, you can
imagine my curiosity in picking up something called, “Hitler’s Time Machine.” Some
assumptions leapt immediately mind; it being a sci-fi thriller set against the
backdrop of World War II.
Robert F. Door is an Air Force vet and one-time diplomat. He
has written several military history books. “Hitler’s Time Machine” is his
first fiction title and I’m delighted to say he hits a home run his first time
at bat. Within just a few chapters, I was hooked. Long before the advent of
World War II, a German sniper arrives on Campobello Island.
He has traveled from the future to injure the famous inhabitant of that little
island off the Canadian coast, Franklin D. Roosevelt. From that opening
sequence the narrative takes of like a V-2 rocket, pulling the reader along for
a wild, crazy adventure wherein both the U.S. and Germans simultaneously
begin experimenting with time travel as another way of fighting the war.
In the states, the program is led by a tenacious, brilliant
young woman named Barbara Stafford, while in Germany, her counterpart is Prof.
Kimmler, one of the men tasked with creating the Holocaust death camps. While
Barbara struggles to deal with the overt sexism of the 40s, Kimmler is caught
up in playing political games between the Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler, and one of his
most trusted advisors and chief off the SS, Heinrich Himmler. Throughout the
story, Dorr brilliantly mixes real history with his fictional narrative weaving
them into a seamless tapestry that in the end had this reader wondering if the
events in this book didn’t actually happen. That’s how good a writer he is.
In fact, it is this attention to historical detail that
makes “Hitler’s Time Machine” so fascinating. Unlike the majority of overly
verbose thriller writers today, Dorr’s exposition is sparse and to the point.
He doesn’t waste words but creates quick scalpel sharp scenes that built upon
each other to reach a suspense filled climax.
Ever wonder what kind of science-fiction Tom Clancy might have written?
Look not further than “Hitler’s Time Machine.”
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