Customer Reviews

Collision of Evil

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the Bavarian Alps, American backpacker Charles Hirter is hiking when he is brutally murdered. His is CIA operative brother Robert goes to Bavaria to bring his body home, but also to find his sibling's killer and why.

German police detective Kommissar Franz Waldbaer leads the investigation, but no clues surface. Meanwhile Robert employs CIA methods and soon obtains some information on the motive behind his brother's death. A Nazi insists that a dark secret from WWII was hidden in a cave near where Charles' battered corpse was found. Robert makes further inquiries and soon concludes Islamist terrorists have found a weapon of mass destruction they plan to use. Teaming up with the Kommissar, Robert hopes to prevent a tragedy of epic proportions.

Although the plot has been overused since 9/11 and thin, COLLISION OF EVIL is an engaging suspense thriller that constructs the plot from the realism of finding unexploded WWII bombs six decades after the hostilities ended. The story line is action-packed but very straightforward especially in light of the American being a CIA operative (should have been an accountant). Still fans will enjoy this solid suspense German police procedural CIA anti-terrorist thriller.

Harriet Klausner

In an age of drifting attention, Collision of Evil is one of those rare novels that from the first page commands attention and gives the reader immediate returns. Rich with historical detail, cultural and political nuance, Collision of Evil offers the reader a deep sense of context that's sorely lacking in many of today's thrillers and spy novels. John Le Beau's eye for detail is uncanny and his writing prowess ensures that Collision of Evil delivers the right punch at just the right time. The characters and atmospherics are highly developed and spot-on, and the tension builds deliberately and thoughtfully, keeping you alert and eager to find out what's on the next page. In short, Collision of Evil is one smart novel and now that he has this reader's attention, I can't wait to read John Le Beau's next.

As the reader one is steered through a believable plot with details that make the journey all the more conceivable and convincing. This legitimate and authentic feel is probably achieved by the author's intelligence background. "Collision of Evil" describes a feasible scenario -something that could indeed happen. A magnificent and accurate description of Germany and the Germans allows the reader to become truly immersed; this is something I can verify having lived there most of my life. This book would certainly make a great movie, as well! I can only hope that the author writes a follow-on novel with the Waldbaer and Hirter characters one grows to understand and become so fond of. A truly great read not to be put down!

I am a reviewer for BookPleasures. The following is my review posted on that website.


To one who has worked with, but not for, the Central Intelligence Agency and has been fortunate enough to visit Munich and southern Bavaria reading the book would have told me his former profession and where he had spent much time.

The imaginative premise of Collision of Evil is self-described by the title. The decades-old evil that was the Third Reich has been fused with the modern evil of suicidal jihadist Muslim radicals.

The book's protagonist, Robert Hirter, is awakened at four in the morning by a call from someone with a heavy German accent saying, "We have find your brother Charles who it is sorry for us to say now is dead." When the caller learns that Hirter speaks German, he provides more detail with a clear message. Hirter's brother was murdered.

Le Beau effortlessly shifts point of view in telling of Collision of Evil from Hirter to the Bavarian Police Kommisar assigned to the case, Franz Waldbaer to the leader of the jihad group, Mohammed al-Assad.

When Hirter arrives at the hotel where his brother had been staying, he is handed a note while checking in. The note is from one August Sedlmeyer who claims to have historical background information that may prove interesting to one investigating the circumstances of the murder.

Intrigued, Hirter meets with Sedlmeyer and listens to a lengthy narrative of how a detachment of 50 Waffen SS soldiers from the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler division had been assembled to escort an unknown, but extremely sensitive cargo, to its hiding place in a mountain cave below Munich, in southern Bavaria. The morning after the secret cargo is hidden; the unit is given a directive to surrender. Hitler is dead. The group is also told to forget their final mission as Waffen SS. The boxes were hidden in a cave just above the high meadow where Hirter's brother was murdered.

Le Beau draws the characters of Robert Hirter and Police Kommisar Waldbaer clearly. The tensions and eventual friendship of the two forms a leitmotif for much of the story. Hirter is a CIA operative and, because of problems presented by internal German politics in the law enforcement community, calls upon his Agency for some technical help and backup. The backup comes in the form of Caroline O'Kendall; a lovely woman he'd known at CIA Headquarters in Langley, VA.

Just what the Waffen SS hid in the cave at the end of WWII and how it threatens the Oktoberfest in Munich through a militant Islamist group, I'll let Le Beau tell you. He has constructed a vivid tale with believable characters and tense action, set in some of the most beautiful scenery on Earth. An exciting read.

A real page-turner that links the evil of the past from the Third Reich to present day terrorists. What makes this book so terrifying and realistic is that author LeBeau is a retired clandestine operations officer in the CIA and is now a professor of National Security Studies at a college in Garmisch, Germany, so he is incredibly knowledgeable about the both subject matter and the area in which the story takes place.

I'm of two minds about John J. Le Beau's Collision of Evil, torn between subject matter and quality. On the good side, it's so refreshing to see a book that doesn't hide the current state of the world, where terrorism is a danger against which we should always be vigilant. Le Beau is an ex-CIA agent, so he definitely knows that of which he speaks. On the other hand, it's just not a very good book. Cardboard characters, awkward plotting and a bit too much propaganda bring the novel down way too far in my estimation. I am very glad I read the book, but I wish it had been much better. This is Le Beau's first book, so I'm hoping that subsequent ones will be a bit more polished.

An American tourist in the Bavarian Alps is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hiking in the mountains during a rainstorm, Charles Hirter stumbles upon a cave with a large stack of old crates in it. On the way back down the mountain, he is murdered. Kommissar Franz Waldbaer is in charge of the investigation. Was it a random murder, or was it planned? His life is complicated further when Hirter's brother, Robert, shows up not only to bring the body home but to help in the investigation as well. Robert's much more than he seems, and their investigation begins to reveal a terrifying plot that will jolt German society, and Western society in general, to its very core.

Collision of Evil is a very plot-heavy novel, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that. For the most part, it's the plot of the novel that is Le Beau's strength, as he slowly reveals the plan to the reader as Hirter and Waldbaer discover pieces of it. We do see things from the villains' points of view as well, but Le Beau only gets clear with these viewpoints once our heroes have more of an understanding of what is going on. He plays his cards close to his chest in the meantime, which adds a sense of menace to the whole proceeding. As said before, it's also nice to see a plot which actually is taken from current headlines rather than manufacturing villains for the sake of avoiding them. As the plot is executed, the book turns almost riveting, just wondering whether or not our heroes will succeed in stopping it.

Unfortunately, this is the extent of the praise I can give the novel. While plot-driven novels are ok, I find them extremely boring if the characters aren't that interesting to read about. In this case, they generally aren't. Le Beau gives them just enough characterization so that the book can't be considered an essay, but nowhere near enough to make them interesting. Waldbaer comes closest to actually being fleshed out, but even he suffers. Le Beau illustrates his characters through their mannerisms, with the occasional infodump as one of them explains to another some piece of their own history. Sometimes they do it because it might have some bearing on the case, and other times it's to showcase that these two are beginning to respect each other. Never is it that interesting. In fact, I found the digressions back to the final days of World War II more interesting at times than the lead-up to discovering what's actually going on in the novel.

The prose is also rather wooden and Le Beau annoyingly includes some asides that I assume are supposed to add to the characters but instead just seem pointless. Hirter and a CIA technician back home, Caroline O'Kendall, have some kind of weird flirtation going for no real reason. They've met once, I believe, maybe twice. When Hirter is first told of her, he remembers that she is "pretty." O'Kendall kind of remembers that he was nice-looking too. But that's pretty much all there is too it, even when they do eventually meet in the novel. The fact that these characters weren't that interesting to begin with makes these lines even more off-putting than they already were.

There are many other things wrong that either make Collision of Evil look sloppy or make it look like it has its own ulterior motives. These include editing mistakes and plot elements that are just there to make a point. First, a man sneaks up behind another man and kills him, but as he's doing the sneaking, Le Beau tells us that the second man's jacket is missing buttons. Since the scene is from the point of view of the attacker, how could he know this? Then, the lead bad guy has a vision that they're in danger of discovery, and this prompts them to move just as Hirter and Waldbaer are about to discover them. This seems horribly out of place in a "regular" (i.e. non-fantasy or religious) novel, a way to move the plot forward because Le Beau couldn't think of anything else. Not the fact that he has a vision (religious fanatics have them all the time), but that the vision is actually true.

There are also a couple of propaganda points in the novel that were irritating, despite the fact that I probably would agree with him on them. First, Le Beau takes a veiled shot at the German health care system by noting in passing that Waldbaer's wound (when he gets shot) gets infected in the hospital.

Secondly, and more egregious, is a scene where he has a German committee deciding how to act on the intelligence that the CIA has given them about the plot. There is one very vocal woman who seems more interested in whether or not the information was obtained through torture than she is on what they can do to stop the plot. Le Beau describes her in such an ugly way that it had to be on purpose, especially considering he calls her boss "fit and sleek." She is described as the committee chairman's "corpulent deputy." Later in the meeting, Le Beau says: "With a tug at the red-patterned silk scarf intended to conceal her multiplicity of chins..." Finally, there's "The heavy woman shifted in her chair, which groaned in rebuke at the strain." I have no sympathy for this woman's point of view, but even I'm offended! Come on, Mr. Le Beau. Don't they teach subtlety in the CIA?

I will give Collision of Evil props for the plot, but I really wish it had been a better book to showcase that this type of book is very important in modern times. As it is, I can't recommend the book at all, despite really liking the overall intention of the book. The pace is slow, the writing is wooden and it was just a chore to get through. This is an exciting plot! But told in a very dull, misguided manner.

Originally published on Curled Up With a Good Book. © David Roy, 2009

As evening falls against the majestic backdrop of the Bavarian Alps, Charles Hirter, an American tourist, is savagely murdered. In the peace, quiet and pastoral splendor of this magnificent setting, Charles Hirter draws his last breath. Was Charles simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Kommissar Franz Waldbaer, the German detective in charge of the case, faces an investigation that yields neither clues nor suspects nor motives. A gruff, go-it alone detective, Waldbaer is dismayed by the arrival of Robert Hirter, the victim's brother, who insists on joining the investigation. But there is more to Robert than meets the eye. As Robert and the Kommissar uncover a nefarious nexus of evil past and evil present, they find themselves probing dark, long-forgotten episodes from the Third Reich in order to identify the present threat. Thrust into a violent world of fanatic passions, malevolent intentions and excruciating urgency, Robert Hirter and Kommissar Waldbaer must race against the clock to stop a sophisticated, covert, and deadly plot.

Yes, this book falls slightly outside my "comfort genre zone". However - always in for stretching myself I wanted to give this book a read. Why this book? Well, I do love a good mystery - and even a good thriller. The stretch comes in the international espionage type books that just can't hold my attention. An international spy I will never be. The hook for me was actually in the author, John J. Le Beau. I like to read books where the authors really have a background in what they are talking about and John does have that. He served as an operations officer in the CIA for over 25 years and now serves as a Professor of National Security Studies. I have always heard that you should write what you know.... and John does just that.

I enjoyed the fact that the person going after Charles murderer was his brother Robert. That made the story real to me... not so over the top that I couldn't keep up. By uncovering the pieces to Charles murder, Robert starts to bring in the reality that what has happened has a larger impact on the world then he could have ever anticipated.

A fast paced - and plenty of action read, John does deliver the book I believe he sat out to write. I have to say that while this would normally not be a book for me, I found that John was able to write this style of book without overloading it with so many complications and twists that it left readers like myself in the dust. I was pleasantly surprised.

American tourist Charles Hirter was out taking a hike, enjoying his vacation in Austria. Sadly, Charles realized too late that this hike would be his last. Charles's body is discovered. His head was bashed in.

It has been a while since Robert has seen his brother. It came as quite a shock when he received a phone call that Charles was dead. Robert travels to Austria to identify for the body. Franz Waldbaer, the lead detective tells Robert that the authorities can handle the case and Robert can go home to the states. Robert will not leave till he learns why Charles was murdered. Together Franz Waldbaer and Robert team up. What they discover is of importance of national security.

Collision of Evil is author, John J. Le Beau's first novel. I thought he did a pretty good job. Collision of Evil is what I would call an international thriller. At the beginning of the book, Mr. Le Beau shares true events about World War 2 bombs that were dropped off in Salzburg, Austria. Unclaimed ones were discovered. This helped set up the plot for this book. As far as this book is considered, I do think readers will enjoy this book. It had plenty of action and suspense. The two main characters Robert Hirter and Kommissar Franz Waldbaer made a good duo. With Robert's drive to avenge his brother's death and Franz's determination, I feel bad for any one who gets in their way. Collision of Evil is worth a look.

Evil is evil, no matter how old or ancient. "Collision of Evil" is an international thriller following German detective Franz Waldbaer as he works with the brother of a murdered man to solve said murder. Shadows of past evils that the German people are ashamed of still hang over their heads as Waldbaer's investigation of the murder turns into something more than murder, he finds a larger conspiracy may be behind it all. "Collision of Evil" is an exciting thriller, sure to keep the pages turning.

This story is gripping from beginning to end--I could hardly put it down once I had started. Dr. LeBeau's close attention to detail and extensive knowledge of Germany and Austria where the adventure takes place makes it all the more believable and exciting to read. Not only does the author give us action and suspense, but he also shows us in vivid detail the political and cultural influences that could allow such a plot to unfold. What makes Dr. LeBeau's work fascinating and unique is his professional knowledge of the material and his ability to incorporate international realities into a suspenseful and intelligent adventure for his readers. "Collision of Evil" is truly refreshing and fulfilling for anyone, be the person a political science student or a casual reader, and will leave you wanting more.