I don’t know whether many of us will be familiar with the central conceit of this novel: it was a bestseller, but in the early 90s when I wasn’t paying attention to trends in literature. I knew of it somehow, and was saving it because it’s pretty much all my guilty-pleasure genres in one: historical fiction detective story, set in parallel universe. In short, it’s an alternative 1964 in which Germany has won WWII and most of Europe is under the rule of Adolf Hitler, who is about to celebrate his 75th birthday.