The Counterfeit Candidate (The Reich Trilogy)

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Klein has allowed his imaginative powers to run wild and has dreamed up a plot that hinges on a conspiracy theory centred around the suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun in their bunker in Berlin, following the capitulation of the German war machine to the Allied Forces. Subsequently, we made a further 18 video/DVDs together and, in 2002, he asked me to work with him on his new Top Gear format. I would love the next road trip to be based in Japan as the boys will truly be like fish out of water—struggling with the language, the culture and the food. I like the idea of the author Brian Klein reading biographies of Hitler and thinking: that's not a man who would have committed suicide - then imagining what else might have happened.

There is a third option, that Chief Inspector Nicolas Vargas who has been put on the case discovers who the men are first and get to them before the finders do.The book runs with the conspiracy theory that Hitler never killed himself and that he and his wife fled to Argentina. Senator John Franklin, hailed as the “Great Unifier”, secures the Republican Presidential nomination and seems destined for the Oval Office. I also love how the three thieves had planned everything for months, including getting rid of the dirt, timings (though they got this slightly wrong as only 90 boxes were taken), even their encounters with the police were calculated and planned. I worked with them from the very first show in 2002 until 2015 during which time we produced 22 series together.

Despite the different nationalities of the participants, they were all fluent in a second language; German. I’ve always had a gut feeling that Hitler wasn’t the kind of man to take his own life, but then again, there is a great deal of compelling evidence, and eye-witness testimony, to suggest he did. Apart from a few problematic issues, I think that for a debut novel, The Counterfeit Candidate is quite good. In addition to being Top Gear’s longest-serving director, Brian Klein also directs Sky Max’s biggest entertainment show, A League of Their Own Road Trip.The fact the Führer, unlike many other senior Nazis, didn’t take advantage of the obvious escape route to South America but, instead, opted to take his own life had always struck me as highly suspicious. How much involvement do you have with planning the road trips, and what road trip would you love to send the team on?

During the investigation, Vargas realises the gravity of the case and the potential geopolitical turmoil that could be unleashed on solving the crime.Novels such as SS-GB and Fatherland admittedly set the bar very high but there's no excuse for using clichés whenever the opportunity presents, nor for the number of murders included. As a student, I studied Hitler and the rise and fall of The Third Reich at Queen Mary College, where I completed a degree in History and Modern Politics. One of the enduring conspiracy theories of the 20 th century is whether Adolf Hitler actually survived the end of the Second World War and that killer hook forms the starting point for The Counterfeit Candidate.