Customer Reviews

Call from Austria

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Austria? Where's that?

What can a reader say about this book?

It's old, in relative terms, written in the early 1960s. It takes place in Austria. It has to do with a Nazi sympathizer (from Argentina) who finds a fortune in an Austrian cave. This man's name is Aleman, the bad guy in this story.

This short novel is perhaps better called a novella.

Robert Brisson gets a call from his brother, Reid, from Austria. Reid asks his brother to join him, and in a hurry.

Robert does go to Austria, but Reid is nowhere to be found. Instead, Robert finds some loose ends he himself had left there, during the war. Robert is a newspaper reporter.

These loose ends were, namely, a father and daughter. The father, Tanner, hates Robert Brisson, because, so he believes, Robert set him up with the Russians, as a Nazi collaborator. The daughter, Christine, had a "school girl crush" on Robert, but because of her father's dislike, she renounced her own feelings.

The main thread of the story is Aleman, who happened to come across a cave in the local mountains containing all kinds of Nazi wealth, stolen from holocaust victims and who knows who else.

The upshot is that, due to some coincidence, Robert and the local police inspector, a man named Strubb, finally connect the dots and approach Aleman, the heartless power monger behind all the mayhem, including Tanner's disgrace as a Nazi collaborator.

Now you guess what Aleman does. Remember, this is a cold-blooded seeker of power with no love for anyone except himself. What would a man like this do? Would he commit suicide?

I doubt it, but then, what do I know?

Aleman commits suicide, Tanner's good name is restored, Reid is found alive and still salvageable, and Christine and Robert end up in each other's arms, lovers once more.

It's a short, abrupt ending. It almost seems as if Ms. Albrand's editor was pressing her for the manuscript and called for her to end the story, never mind the logic of it.

Therefore, you will probably be entertained for a little while reading this book, and maybe you'll learn something about a rural, mountainous region of Austria.

If you're like me, you'll want to re-write the climax and maybe elaborate a little bit more. Evil men do not commit suicide, rather they go on to cause more problems another day. Don't they? If they commit suicide, they aren't really evil, they're just lost.

Diximus.