Double Crossing [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

"Man's Humanity to Man": It's a line from this riveting Cold War-era novel from Erika Holzer. That line sums up the book's theme, during its climatic chapters. As for the plot, I won't give too much away, save that it's intricately plotted suspense that culminates in a daring escape at the Berlin Wall.

I first read "Double Crossing" in 1984, shortly after it was published, and while stationed at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, as an Army private, just turned 19. Coming back to reading it (doing the math, I'm now 42 -- more than two lifetimes of a nineteen year old) I was prepared to find it "dated," because the Berlin Wall fell just five years later, in 1989. At the time of my first reading, I was reading a lot of Robert Ludlum and Ken Follett spy novels, and remembered regarding this book as belonging in the same company.

Yet, upon re-reading, "Double Crossing" was even better this time because it wasn't dated at all, it just aged nicely. Reading a book at 42 is worlds away from reading it at 19, and what struck me this go around was that Holzer took a family saga and wrapped it inside a political spy thriller. At 19, I read it for its plot, but this time I got wrapped up in the personal lives of its characters. Although the particular genre in which Holzer wrote this book requires its characters to be "types," the characters were hardly "typecast": Rather, she gives us some interesting heroes, sadistic villains, a ravishing heroine and some tragic heroes that make this novel as palatable a read for those (such as I) who enjoy convincing characterization as much as fast-paced plotting ("Double Crossing" has both). All the qualities you find in Shakespeare's "Othello" or "Hamlet" are on display in the pages of this book: Envy, fear, opportunism, betrayal, honor, ambivalence, boldness, avarice, cowardice, and redemption coarse through the veins and actions of Holzer's panoply of characters.

"Double Crossing" was a real page-turner, not so much because of "what happens next," but because of "what will happen TO THEM next." I got all wound up in the fate of Soviet doctor Kiril Andreyev, his lover Galya, hot-tempered American journalist Adrienne Brenner, her world-famous surgeon husband Kurt Brenner, and even an East German Stasi agent, Oberst von Eyssen.

"Double Crossing" also played a part in my own little personal mission I had when going into East Germany often to West Berlin, as a soldier stationed in West Germany during the mid-1980s. I visited West Berlin often, probably about twenty times. Only a few times did I go by the British troop train; mostly I took the Autobahn from Helmstedt. We Allied soldiers were permitted only to stop at the picnic rest areas; we were forbidden to prematurely exit before reaching the checkpoint at West Berlin. The first time I stopped, I did so to use the restroom, but I took in the surroundings. We were not permitted to talk with any East Germans, but we were free to spend a limited amount of time there to eat, wash up, and then get back on the road.

So, I came up with a little plot: Each time I drove to West Berlin, I would stop, eat my bag lunch at a picnic table, while lesiurely reading a book. When I left the table to dispose of my litter I would "accidentally" leave my book behind on the picnic table. Said book was always a banned tome, in German, such as "1984," "Animal Farm," "One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich," or "Doctor Zhivago."

At the time, it struck me as ironic that banning these books inside the Iron Curtain was superfluous -- just as reading them would be: People have eyes and ears, and many of the events that seemed so grim to Westerners were taken for granted as just another part of life for those whose fates were tethered on long leashes from Moscow.

Yet, to understand the power of words, consider the political correctness we live under in the U.S. today: Stating the obvious has become an act of self-sabotage or political courage, depending on which side of the fence you are on.

I'm hoping that even just one of the books I "mislaid" in East Germany found its way into the "right" hands -- citizens who who'd have seen that many in the West sympathized with their predicament of being prisoners in their own country. One of the books I left behind was this one, and I must admit part of the courage to go through with my scheme came from my enthusiastic response to it.

And, to anyone still laboring under the misimpression that this book's message is "dated," since the statues of Lenin were toppled years ago, consider this: Today, around much of the world, an Iron Veil has descended over free thought, expression and choice. Imagine the inspiration a woman in Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Somalia, would receive upon meeting this book's heroine, a self-assured woman who speaks her mind even in the face of danger and who doesn't bow and scrape before authority. A tough woman in a pantsuit, when pantsuits were still cool and the uniform of choice for independent women like Kate Jackson from "Charlie's Angels" and models in the Virginia Slims cigarette ads (long before Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi made the pantsuit the wardrobe choice of humorless and patronizing over-the-hill feminists everywhere).

For anyone who values liberty over tyranny and independent thought over the enforced dogma of the party line, great reads such as "Double Crossing" will never become "dated."

In the end, a good novel is about people and Ms. Holzer does a wonderful job in "Double Crossing," making us care about those who live in slavery and will do anything to find freedom. This is an uplifting, powerful novel by someone who obviously knows the territory. i recommend it highly.

This is probably the most consistently riveting book I've ever read. It maintains a tension throughout, and the plot twists never let the reader get a sense of what is to come next. The term is greatly overused, but it applies here; I couldn't put it down!