Hitler's Legacy

Hitler's Legacy, by David Alexander

June, 1989  Leisure Books

While he was writing Phoenix and Z-Comm, David Alexander also published this one-shot paperback original, which is one of the most deceptively thick books I’ve ever seen. Even though it’s 281 pages long, the print is super large and the novel’s really about the length of the average men’s adventure novel. I guess Leisure just wanted to push it as a “real novel” for the crowd who likes those extra-long suspense thrillers. Maybe they were going for the Tom Clancy audience, who knows. But Hitler’s Legacy instead comes off like the first volume of an action series that never was. 

At first I was hoping this would be David Alexander’s take on Dirty Harry, as the protagonist is a cop “with a chip on his shoulder.” But the cop setup is barely explored, and in reality protagonist Matthew Kells is a highly-experienced commando who was in various special forces, worked for the CIA, and only recently became a cop in New York so as to “give back to the community.” He has little in common with Dirty Harry or even Joe Ryker; this is not a police procedural, and in fact Kells acts more like your standard action-series hero, even wielding the same machine gun as Magnus Trench in Phoenix (a Minimi). The Alexander novel Hitler’s Legacy most reminds me of is Nomad #1, with the same pseudo-James Bond setup, lots of globetrotting, and an endless supply of international terrorists for our hero to kill. 

Actually, there’s less of an action onslaught in Hitler’s Legacy than in that first Nomad installment. It seems that David Alexander was trying to rein it in a bit; even the gore isn’t nearly as spectacular as Phoenix, and all the sex is off-page. So maybe this really was an attempt at a suspense-thriller type of mainstream novel, one that features a reborn Nazi menace as the threat. And Alexander spends more time scene-setting than he does in one of his series novels. The situation begins with a series of murders across the globe; the victims are all old German men. The mystery moves to America when a group of terrorists open fire at the Times Square subway station, mowing down a horde of innocents – and apparently using the massacre to mask the fact that their real target is yet another old German man. 

Meanwhile hero cop Matthew Kells isn’t even active on the force; he’s been put on unpaid suspension due to blowing away a rapist. Even though the rapist had just murdered someone and was coming after Kells, it doesn’t matter – the usual goddamn liberal lawyers got him off and the Internal Affairs guys managed to get Kells suspended. When we meet him he’s working on some stockyard or somesuch, and gets in a fight with some thug. Alexander uses a crude tone throughout the novel, with Kells delivering R-rated retorts. In fact it’s pretty easy to see someone like Bruce Willis in the role, and what with the globe-spanning action and frequent one-liners you get the feeling that Alexander is writing the novelization of a movie that never was. 

Due to his convoluted backstory Kells has some serious anti-terrorism experience, and thus he’s called in by his chief to look into the Times Square Massacre. The NYPD Anti-Terrorism squad is mostly staffed with guys who have only studied terrorism, and have no first-hand experience with it. Kells is needed due to his expertise, even if he’s been suspended. Within a few hours of studying the crime scene photos, Kells deduces that the “terrorists” pulled off the massacre as a cover for an assassination, and the old man was their real target. He breaks into the dead man’s apartment and finds an old photo of Nazis, with a cryptic message written on it. Gradually Kells will learn that the old man was part of a special Nazi squad that was active in the last days of the war. 

At this point the cop setup is dropped. Kells is sent over to Europe as a “representative” of the NYPD, not even carrying a gun. But of course he has no problem arming himself, giving his familiarity with the territory and the various gun-runners who operate there. He also suddenly gets a partner: Sidney, a smokin’ hot blonde who has intelligence-world connections and will serve as Kells’s partner (and occasional bedmate) for the rest of the novel. This further lends Hitler’s Legacy a proto-Nomad vibe, as I recall the hero of that novel jet-setting around Europe with his own beautiful babe in tow. However as mentioned Alexander keeps all the sex off-page; even an earlier scene, where Kells manages to score with a bar floozy, is an immediate fade to black. Again it gives the impression that he was writing the book with more of a mainstream market in mind. 

There’s no sleaze, but Alexander does use the term “fellatrix” to describe that bar floozy. This made me chuckle, as the only other time I’ve seen that word was in Richard Blade #1, by one of my favorite writers, Manning Lee Stokes. It’s a rather highfalutin word that describes a woman who has superior oral skills. Alexander’s usage of the term really threw me for a loop, as it’s not in his usual style. It’s a fun word, and one I think we should see a whole lot more often. Otherwise Alexander keeps the exploitative stuff to a minimum, barely even describing Sidney’s apparently-incredible bod. Instead, the crudity is in the tone of the narrative itself; Alexander peppers his word-painting with coarse, off-hand comments, a la “…the hands of the French were as dirty as a well-digger’s asshole.” That doesn’t even make any sense, but it certainly paints a picture. 

Kells and Sidney venture around Europe, tracking down leads. The story eventually unfolds that these old men being assassinated were part of a last-ditch Nazi gambit, and “Bloodstar” is the name of the mission they were on. Kells will soon learn that the mission never ended; Bloodstar was planned as an endless series of terrorist attacks and assassinations to keep the Nazi flame burning. He’ll even learn that “the murder of the Kennedy brothers” was a Bloodstar initiative. Kells will also learn that the CIA has well been aware of this Nazi menace, and indeed has been working right alongside it. Kells has a few run-ins with the Agency, and at one point even gets captured by them…a bit that’s very men’s adventure-esque, as despite being chained and beaten Kells is still able to get the drop on his tormentors, appropriating a gun. 

Even Kells’s arsenal is straight out of men’s adventure. Through his underworld contacts in Zurich he gets himself a Mini-Uzi, a Beretta 93R (favored by Mack Bolan around this time), and a SPAS-15 auto shotgun. He engages in frequent firefights, and his main nemesis in the novel is a blond giant with the codename Polaris. Giving the book even more of a “novelization of a film that never was” vibe, Polaris clearly seems to be inspired by Dolph Lundgren. Alexander’s Phoenix novels were filled with outlandish gore, but the gunfights here are mostly bloodless. Speaking of Mack Bolan, I just realized that the entire plot of Hitler’s Legacy, which concerns an old Nazi menace that still has repercussions today (complete with an entire neo-Nazi army), is very similar to Gerald Montgomery’s COMCON trilogy…only that later Executioner series was more in the vein of men’s adventure pulp, with superpowered soldiers and demons(!). 

But as mentioned Alexander gets closer to the vibe of men’s adventure himself as the novel gets into the final quarter. Here in the climax Kells finds himself in a Bavarian castle; it’s the headquarters of this neo-Nazi movement, and Kells gets hold of that Minimi machine gun and raises hell. There are also various revelations around who is really on Kells’s side and who is his enemy. The (uncredited) cover depicts the White House with Hitler’s crazy eyes overtop it; Kells discovers by novel’s end that the upper levels of the US government might be aligned with this Nazi menace. In the climax Kells pulls a disappearing trick – even disappearing from the narrative itself, a la Tyrone Slothrop in Gravity’s Rainbow – to hide from the US government. (Maybe Kells should go to Switzerland!) 

The following year Alexander published another thick paperback original with Leisure: Angel Of Death. It too has a “Nazis in the modern day” plot, but I’m too lazy to check my copy to see if it’s a sequel to Hitler’s Legacy. I guess I’ll find out someday.