Longyear posits a relationship with Adolf Hitler that starts in the trenches of the First World War, and ends in a bunker in Berlin a quarter of a century earlier. Not really alternate history, certainly not science fiction, and with ein passing nod to genre fiction. The grim realities of life in the trenches, and in the Berlin bunker are well described, but they have been described well elsewhere over many years in both print and in film, and the underlying premise of the story (a crime scene that suggested the final moments of Hitler were not perhaps as they should have been) doesn’t really work for me.