Fear Itself - Softcover

Rosenheim, Andrew

3.32

131 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009951012X ISBN 13: 9780099510123

Publisher: Arrow, 2012

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A compelling, finely-crafted, intelligent thriller set in the Second World War.

It is 1940, and war is raging in Europe. With forty million citizens of German ancestry, there is great pressure within America to stay out of the fight. Elements ranging from the Nazi-sympathetic German-American Bund to the WASP-led America First movement are working feverishly to make sure America does not intervene on the side of a beleaguered Great Britain.

Jimmy Nessheim, a 28-year-old German-American Lutheran, is working for the still-fledgling FBI. Having grown up in a small Wisconsin town, Nessheim has attended the University of Chicago already known for its radical theories of education and Leftist sympathies. But Nessheim is conservative, befitting his small town upbringing as the son of a schoolteacher, and plays American football in college. Dealing with his own conflicts and that of his divided community, Nessheim finds himself assigned to infiltrate the Bund to seek out suspected Nazi-extremists. His investigations take him deep into the heart of Roosevelt's government. But as he moves closer to the truth, another even more sinister plot emerges which threatens the very foundations of American democracy.

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About the Author:

ANDREW ROSENHEIM came to England from America as a Rhodes Scholar in 1977 and has lived near Oxford ever since. He is the author of Stillriver, Keeping Secrets and Without Prejudice. He is married and has twin daughters.

From Booklist:

Young FBI agent Jimmy Nessheim is assigned to go undercover in the German American Bund in 1936. The assignment ignores J. Edgar Hoover’s narrow focus on Communists, labor unions, and jazz musicians and violates Hoover’s edict that FBI agents do not work undercover. Harry Guttman, the Jewish FBI agent who makes the assignment, knows he’s risking his career and possibly Nessheim’s life. But Nessheim’s time in the Bund helps Guttman piece together a serious Nazi threat to the life of Franklin Roosevelt, which leads to another undercover assignment for Nessheim, this time in the White House. This is the first novel in a series projected to cover 1936 through World War II, and Rosenheim paints a disturbingly vivid portrait of the U.S. riven by the Great Depression, political conflicts, and concerns about looming war in Europe. The rumpled, intelligent Guttman is a compelling character who shrugs off the pervasive anti-Semitism he encounters in his fellow FBI agents. The Nazi plot is convoluted but effectively maintains tension, and Rosenheim’s picture of pre-WWII America is riveting. --Thomas Gaughan

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