The Counterfeit Candidate (The Last Reich Trilogy)

What if Hitler survived—and his acolytes infiltrated the heart of American democracy? In this pulse-pounding opening to Brian Klein’s Last Reich Trilogy, two detectives uncover a conspiracy stretching from Nazi bunkers to Buenos Aires bank vaults to the U.S. presidential campaign trail—where every secret comes at the cost of another corpse.

April 30, 1945: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun are reported dead in Berlin. But rumors persist. No bodies were ever found.

Buenos Aires, 2012: Three thieves tunnel into a vault and unknowingly steal a briefcase that conceals a secret stretching back to the Third Reich. Within hours, they are hunted down, tortured, and murdered.

San Francisco, 2012: Senator John Franklin, the charismatic “Great Unifier,” secures the Republican presidential nomination—destined for the White House—but a blood-soaked trail suggests that his rise may be linked to the Buenos Aires murders and the secrets of 1945 Berlin.

Chief Inspector Nicolás Vargas of the Buenos Aires police and LAPD Lieutenant Troy Hembury find themselves entangled in a transcontinental conspiracy that connects stolen Nazi secrets to the highest levels of American politics.

Fast-paced, cinematic, and spanning the globe, The Counterfeit Candidate is a masterful thriller that blends crime, political intrigue, and alternative history into a propulsive page-turner where nothing is what it seems and democracy itself hangs by a thread.

Brian Klein is an Emmy and BAFTA–winning television director with more than twenty-five years of experience, best known as the longest-serving director of Top Gear and as director of A League of Their Own: Road Trip. His work has appeared on Netflix, Amazon Prime, BBC, and Sky, reaching millions of viewers worldwide. He lives in England.