Winter's Day - Beukes, Eben

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Résumé :
APRIL 1945. AS THE WAY IN EUROPE SHUDDERS TO A HALT AND GERMANY LIES IN RUINS, HITLES LAUNCHES A LAST STRIKE AT THE HEART OF AMERICA... YOUR BROTHER IS ALIVE... German engineering corps major Alex Winter is desperately construction a pontoon bridge as the defeated Wehrmacht fights a rearguard action against the rapidly advancing Russians when he is summoned to Hitler's bunker in Berlin. His identical brother, Max, did not die in an accident at sea in 1938 but was given a new identity by his Nazi controllers and is working as a nuclear physicist on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the worlds' first atomic bomb is about to be tested. Surgically separated at birth but sharing a special bond, the young brothers were subjected to a series of mind-control experiments by their fanatical Nazi parents with only Max, the weaker one, being found suitable. With the dying days of the Third Reich approaching, Hitler orders Max to activate the model version of the weapon he has secretly been working on: his final revenge. But there's a problem. Max is refusing to respond, blocking with the word Ivan when his controller, a New-York-based psychiatrist, gives the command. ?Does the answer lie in a secret pact between the twins? Winter refuses to help but the Nazis have powerful tools of persuasion and within hours, he finds himself on a U-boat and heading for the USA and Los Alamos in the company of a sinister SS Colonel, soon to face the brother he never wanted to see again, for there is unfinished business between the brothers and when the woman they both loved suddenly appears, old wounds are re-opened and the body count starts mounting as events roll on to a terrifying climax.

Biographie:
Growing up in apartheid-era South Africa Eben Beukes experienced at first hand the turbulent transition period of that country to a modern democracy. A University of Stellenbosch graduate he worked as a young surgeon in several of the country's black hospitals after completing his compulsory military service in the SADF.In later years he worked as a surgeon at a large military hospital in Saudi Arabia, two years in New Zealand and for the five years leading up to 2006 was a senior surgeon at the Armed Forces Hospital in Kuwait City, the base hospital at the start of the Iraq War in 2003.His experience during the six weeks war led to the publication of Pockets of Resistance documenting the often farcical and always chaotic inner workings of a large military hospital with Americans and Arabs reluctantly rubbing shoulders while in the throes of a hot war. A total of seven years in the Middle East provided the background for both The Mask of Louka (Saudi Arabia) and its sequel, Devil's Tumble, both featuring British educated Kuwaiti detective, Riad Ajmi.Earlier novels were political thrillers set against the background of a newly democratic South Africa. These feature Harry Dance in the Shadows of a Rainbow trilogy: The Cherry Red Shadow, The Lily White Shadow and the recently published The Blue Ice Shadow.Other novels include Any Way the Wind Blows, a noir detective novel as well as A Straitlaced Man.Eben Beukes lives in Australia.