In the 1970s, a cottage industry of novelists emerged to exploit lingering fears of Nazi Germany.
Robert Ludnum’s The Holcroft Covenant is a product of that movement.
A Swiss bank contacts American architect Noel Holcroft about a trust fund established by his natural father, Heinrich Clausen, and two other Nazis.
The three stole German funds, leaving instructions with their banker for disbursing the stolen money in 30 years to aid survivors and descendants of Holocaust victims.
Signatures from heirs of all trust fund signatories are required for the bank to release the funds, now grown to $780 million.
Noel is to locate those heirs.
What Noel does not know is that at the same time the “repentant Nazis” were setting up the compensation fund, other Nazis were sending thousands of their children to safety so when they became adults in the 1970s, they could establish a Fourth Reich.
Ludnum establishes all that background in the first 10 pages.
The rest of the book is a blur of action with Noel trying to play secret agent, the bad guys shooting everything that moves, and characters with the personalities of Lego blocks.
Ludnum’s epilogue leaves readers with a vision of the future, which we’re seeing come to life in the 21st century.
The Holcroft Covenant by Robert Ludnum
R. Marek Publishers, ©1978. 542 p.
1978 bestseller #8. My grade: B+
©2018 Linda Gorton Aragoni
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