The Darkest Hour: A Novel Paperback – June 16, 2015

Tony Schumacher wrote a trilogy set in the aftermath of the World War II, but with a frightening twist. The Nazi had won and occupied the Great Britain, the royal family and the Prime minister Churchill escaped to Canada. Horrifying outcome, fictional, but not impossible to imagine. Broken nation has broken people and the dirty work continues. Mr. Schumacher has an exceptionally deft hand in this pseudo-historic genre. His characters are vivid and intensely alive and his talent for taking the reader into this, almost real world of fog, poverty and humiliation, freezes the blood. Amazing writing and the real, imperfect, broken hero. Can't wait for the other two books.

An excellent page turner set in Nazi occupied Britiain.Using a "what - if" premise of England losing it's battle with Nazi Germany, the Darkest Hour follows a war hero who is now working for the Reich as a cop responsible for rounding up Jews and putting them on trains to the continent. He believes they are going to be farm laborers and factory workers - or at least that is what he keeps telling himself.The novel takes off when the protagonist finds and shelters a young Jewish boy. Suddenly he is is being sought by the Gestapo, the English resistance underground and Irish gun runners.It's pretty much non-stop action with agents, double agents and spies at every turn. The author does a good job conveying the paranoia felt by the hero of the piece and like him, you're never quite sure who's an ally and who's working both sides.The story continues in a sequel "The British Lion" due out shortly. I like this novel enough to sign up for the next one.

It is a rare book of alternative history that grabs my attention but this one is very well written. Set in a rather gloomy London after the successful German invasion of England, we meet a series of characters who are incredibly well drawn and credible. There is plenty of action and the story is taught with tension and suspense. Nicely done.

It’s an awful premise - what if Germany won WW II in Europe and now occupies England. What would an English war hero that lost everything do? Especially when woken from his stupor of grief - would he continue to live by the new Nazi rules or would he risk it all to possibly redeem himself and save a helpless child? Disturbing but compelling and action packed. A different spin on the late 1940’s in Britain. Highly recommended!

Ever since Harris' Fatherland I have enjoyed fiction that explores alternative history. In The Darkest Hour we are treated to a world where Hitler conquered Britain. Sympathizers, Royalists, survivors, the SS, and Jews...make up the cast of characters. It is set in 1945. America has not engaged and the Nazis still battle the Soviets.We are introduced to Rossett. A British soldier and war hero now working for the occupying forces as a policeman. His sad duties are to round up Jews and fools himself into believing stories of relocation. The plot is simple so will not be shared for fear of spoilers. All of this set up a great premise. Unfortunately the book fell down with repetitious chases, trite moral lectures, and way too much of 'he then did this', 'he told her that' and 'he went down the hall'. It was dense writing but not descriptive so failed to create atmosphere or intrigue.

Excellent crossing between alternate history (Nazis invade and take Britain) a grimy cop thriller / mystery / spy novel - with a seriously hard bitten detective on the London police force who gets ensnarled in forces far greater than himself but has the moxie and guts to see things through.Looking forward to the sequel, due out anytime soon - and heartily endorse it to fans of noir detectives and to alternate history fans, with one warning - this is a very violent book.

I really like "what if" stories, and this one is based on "what if England had surrendered and was occupied by the Nazis?" This scary concept is made more interesting by some excellent characters, especially the main character, a policeman just trying to do his job. While putting an old Jewish man on a train, this policeman (a good man who does evil things) is asked to save the old man's treasure. Caught in the middle of opposing forces of the Nazis, the expelled British government, and the fighting resistance, the task is not so easy. It creates both physical and moral conflicts for our hero. A fast-paced, very good story. I couldn't put it down.

Pretty good plot, well paced, interesting plot twists, but on the whole the book was so far-fetched as to be unbelievable. Reading it reminded me of The Perils of Pauline, a movie serial from the early 1900's, in which the heroine is left in great danger and in an impossible position – until somehow, fantastically, she will escape in next week's installment. I think it is not giving too much away to note that in this book the hero is saved, among other implausible rescues, by falling into a pile of feathers or mattresses or something (I forget). I will certainly not read the sequel to this book.

Isn't enough that something like 80% of books on the market are American, written in that part English, part German prose, K instead of C for example? Then along comes a British author (if you can call Scousers that) who writes or allows his publishers to change English spellings into American ones. Just because the Yanks have the biggest market and half the world speaks American English doesn't mean that our authors have to tag along. I see that Schumacher has two more books already published in this series, which probably means more American speak. Maybe if future books are written in The Queen's English I may give him five stars. Fair spoiled my enjoyment!

As a novel, Tony Schumacher's first book was a significantly gripping read. Within the sadness of a defeated Britain, successfully invaded by Hitler's Germany, there clearly is portrayed the fact that an invasion accomplished does not necessarily mean that the British were a conquered people. Defeated, yes - but Tony Schumacher always stimulates within the reader an appreciation that residual hope still exists. His believable anti-hero, Rossett, is the author's fictional proof of this fact. A London policeman, then war hero, then a prisoner, then policeman again; this time for the occupying Germans, makes for a complex, paradoxical and compelling character. Rossett's introspection concerning the killing of his own wife and family by a British Resistance bomb; plus his redemptive relationship with the young Jewish boy Jacob, and his fair-minded but occasionally ruthless dealings with others is completely believable and portrays a man in emotional free-fall attempting to find his wings for living once more. In Rossett, Tony Schumacher has created an extremely creditable British version of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther (Prague Fatale, etc.) and this is no mean feat as Kerr writes so well. Germany is shown to be struggling to keep the lid on various strands of British resistance (amidst the debatable worth of British collaboration) and so it is the story's sheer pace that carries you along with little respite from a very active story. Historically there were several areas which might provoke genial historical discussion but if you dwell on this sort of thing too much you would lose sight of the fact that this book is neither historical text nor historical fiction. It's actually a very very readable historical counterfactual work of fiction. Mr Schumacher has written an entertaining read and ought to be congratulated for his imaginative first opus. I do hope that there's going to be a sequel to this story. The author's second in this series I am sure will be a ripping yarn.

I was looking forward to reading the book after watching the recent TV Series of the same writer - and interest in the genre of the book - was I disappointed - the premise of the characters Rosset and Koehler should have been fantastic but were diluted beyond belief - I dragged myself through the book to the end and shows how fantastic the late Philip Kerr, Bernie Gunther character and books, were and are to me top of the pile - I can't recommend this book and certainly won't be reading / buying anymore of the same series

With a premise like that, it would take a lot for this book not to be hugely enjoyable. And hugely enjoyable, it certainly is.John Rossett is a war hero turned collaborator – a somewhat robotic figure, reminiscent of Winston Smith in some respects, from Orwell’s 1984. I struggled with him to begin with - his lack of passion, his empty subservience, until it became clear how the war had damaged him on the deepest of levels.Then it all made sense.The plot crackles along in an alternative 1946 London that is beautifully atmospheric, peopled with a whole cast of desperate characters, existing beneath and within the Nazi regime that dominates the lives of every Englishman with a typically iron fist.There are car chases and gunfights, and a cat and mouse game of oppressor versus oppressed, running throughout the book entire book. Holding it all together, however, is the relationship between two seemingly incompatible characters – Rossett and his boss at the Office of Jewish Affairs, Ernst Koehler. Schumacher portrays their relationship brilliantly, holding the tension of the gossamer thread that connects one with the other with a consistently steady hand.Although the book ostensibly seems to be about the recovery of some diamonds, almost the entire cast of the book are out to discover, or rediscover, just one thing – their humanity.This, for me, is an anti-war book. A book that shows what war can do to people, how it can make human beings commit the most horrendous acts, undergo the most horrific experiences, and what it takes from them in the process. But being what it is, humanity can be found in the rarest of places.Highly recommended.

When CSI was at its height in the US with three different series, each one was filmed with a different filter - neon for Las Vegas, tropical for Miami and grey for New York. If it were possible to put one of those filters on a book, then The Darkest Hour would have grey. World War II has ended but in this version, the Allies have not won. There is no jubilation only occupation. London is most definitely grey.Enter John Rossett, an ordinary policeman who is seconded by the Germans to help round up the Jews for transportation. Shattered by the loss of his wife and son, Rossett isn't really living. He drinks to hold the pain back and simply does as he is told by the Germans. Until one day, when he discovers Jacob, a Jewish boy who is hiding in a house that had been cleared of the other Jewish occupants. We quickly discover that Rossett is far from ordinary though. Think of Daniel Craig's Bond and you start to get the measure of the man and just what he is capable of. But with the Germans and the British Resistance on his tail, will he be able to save Jacob?This is a well paced thriller and I'm pleased that I couldn't always work out where it was heading. If I have one quibble (and it's a little one), I wasn't very satisfied with the ending. However, as there's a second book due soon, we will get the opportunity to find out what's happened to Rossett.