Book Details:
Hardback edition published by Holt Rinehart, New York, 1965. First
Edition
Sleeve notes:
Charles Stephenson was a typical English shopkeeper. His appearance was nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the jagged scar across his forehead, there was nothing remarkable about him. A widower for just a short time now, Charles Stephenson was a lonely middle-aged man.
Only two months ago Charles and his wife had gone to the Channel Isles for a holiday, a holiday that ended tragically when Charles carried his wife's drowned body out of the rising sea. A press photographer had seen him then and taken a close-up of his face, the blurred sea in the background, his wife's head
lolling lifelessly against his shoulder.
And now Charles Stephenson knew he had been recognized - that photograph had appeared on the cover of an international magazine and had brought the black past suddenly and terrifyingly to
light.
Abruptly, those years became more real than the brightly-lit wintry streets of
present-day London. Charles was forced to remember his training in the secret Nazi school, his defection, his assumption of a new and different name and life. And now that past was brought back vividly with footsteps echoing out of the dark and the words from the old tongue: Du muss' sterben
- You must die.
Escaping from a London that was no longer safe, and trying to protect his daughter from this unknown menace, Charles Stephenson flees across Europe until finally he makes up his mind to go to South America, to Rio where he finds his Tante Liese and a menace far greater than the one he had imagined.
As counterpoint to Charles's flight, the author sounds a warm and tender love story of two young people- Charles's daughter and a college student--who find tenderness and forgiveness as they help unravel the mystery that surrounds Charles's former life.
Book source:
Terry Jenkins
