K

by Daniel Easterman

En 1932, à la suite de la crise économique, l'aviateur Charles Lindbergh a été élu président des États-Unis avec le soutien du Ku Klux Klan et de l'Alliance aryenne. En 1940, les services secrets britanniques envoient sur place John, un de leurs agents, nom de code Victor. Sa mission est d'abattre le vice-président Stephenson. Doté de l'identité d'un avocat américain, John débarque clandestinement sur les côtes américaines où il est pris en charge par un réseau de résistance. Bientôt, il peut vérifier que les craintes de ses supérieurs sont fondées. Stephenson et Hitler négocient en secret une alliance. Victor réussira-t-il à accomplir sa mission ? Parviendra-t-il à faire échouer le dangereux projet ?
"L'Irlandais Daniel Easterman, spécialiste de l'Islam, a déjà publié plusieurs romans qui dénoncent l'extrémisme, dont Le Nom de la Bête. Ce thème fournit une fois encore la ligne directrice de ce thriller qui comporte de grands moments de bravoure et rappelle de façon fort convaincante les dangers du totalitarisme." Claude Mesplède

Genres: Alternate History, Fiction, Thriller, Science Fiction

500 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

A pseudonym used by Denis M. MacEoin (aka Jonathan Aycliffe).

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I should stop trying alternate history novels. I always go into them thinking “ooo, this will be fun,” and always end up going “oh, come ON,” even if the writing itself is fine.

K is for Killing is a spy novel set in an alternate version of the 1940s, wherein Charles Lindbergh was elected instead of Roosevelt, the KKK took over and allied itself with Nazi Germany. “John Ridgeworth” is a half-American/half-British secret agent sent in to cause havoc. He works with members of the various undergrounds, and the wife of a top-ranking official (with whom he instantly has an affair). There are close calls, hair-breadth escapes, and lots of times when good guys fail. There is torture, murder, the violent deaths of men, women, and children.

With this kind of “alternate history” there a certain coyness to the conceit, a kind of shock value in the very idea. You think it couldn’t have happened here, but what IF IT DID!?! Dun, dun, duuuun! Except that its meant to be taken seriously. K is for Killing is far, far too brutal to be a fun spy caper, or even a semi-serious, hammy what-if scenario (a la Star Trek or Doctor Who).

So because it takes itself so seriously, I was somewhat let down by the simplistic way the way this world has been set up. It is especially tiresome in answering the question of who would be the American Nazis. Why, who else but the usual suspects, the standard supervillains of U.S. History (as judged by modern values, of course). J. Edgar Hoover was a jerk, right? He would have been a Nazi, right? Who else do we dislike today? What horrible role can we shoehorn him into? It is my understanding that David Stephenson, as horrible a person as they come, was pretty well caput (and in prison) by the 1930s. It seems quite a stretch to imagine a world where he could be vice-president. There is a kind of “Legion of Doom” undercurrent here. (What, no Joe McCarthy or Richard Nixon as up-and-coming youngsters?).

It would have been more chilling if some of the “heroes” of 1930s had been suckered in, and appeared as high ranking villains here. I’m talking about people like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, or… Jimmy Stewart, or …I don’t know. Henry Wallace was kind of out there. What if he’d gone in for Fascism instead of kinda-sorta communism? An approach like that may have been more in line with “evil can infiltrate anywhere!” vibe I think he was going for. Surely those people never would have been evil… but what if THEY WERE!?! Instead we get the lowest common denominators.

The biggest turn off for me occurred in the beginning when he described Shirley Temple as “simpering,” demonstrating both a misunderstanding of the word “simper” and an extremely irritating, authorial smirk.

K is for Killing wasn’t a chore to read or to finish; I was curious to see how it all ended (and how many of John’s allies would die horrible deaths), but I’m not sure I bought the concept. There were some very clever bits (the extracts from children’s books) and intriguing/improbable extrapolations from the actual, historical activities of the KKK. But no, for me, it did not quite hang together.

[Reba67 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that was decades ahead of it’s time. It is about a nazi regime that has all of the modern tools like dna tracing etc to keep its citizens in line with. A must read .

[Ophélie Babin · Rating 5 out of 5]

De loin le meilleur livre de mon année 2025!

Le débit est très rapide tout au long du livre. Plusieurs critiques dénoncent qu'il y a trop de mort... Perso, je trouve très juste de tuer plusieurs personnages dans un livre sur l'intolérance 💀 Mon cœur virait de bord à chaque fois et je considère que la froideur (lire indifférence à la limite) des décès ajoute à l'ambiance qu'une personne en temps de conflit aussi intense doit ressentir.

Y'a peut-être juste le dernier quart du livre qui est plus lent, qui s'étire plus, donc ça fait un clash avec le début du livre. Le méchant principal a legit aucune qualité, y'a quelques moments où tu te dis "OH! How convenient" mais rien de majeur.

À quel point c'est appréciable me demanderez vous? Enough for me pour clancher le livre en 7 jours ahahah

[Sophie Cimon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like this book is trying too hard. Every torture is more awful than the previous, all the characters dies, even Anna …
Plus the love story stem from nowhere, completely unbelievable. The president can not only be a bad person with racist policies, he also is a pedophile. So too much for no good reason, not well written. A disappointment, I usually enjoyed alternative timeline.

[Iris Bekker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I enjoyed this book and found it very interesting, it is not one of my favorite Daniel Easterman books.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I want to enjoy alternate history novels more than I actually do. They seem to become quite formulaic after a while.

Nazi/fascist takeover? Check.
Atomic bomb? Check.
The protagonist being a secret jew? Check.
An upcoming event with real historical characters leading to a race against the clock? Check.

This novel's strength is its chilling description of an America plunged into a racist, fascist dictatorship led by the Ku Klux Klan with Charles Lindbergh (as per usual in alternate history novels) as figurehead. Like Warday the text is interspersed with excerpts from fictitious documents which delve deeper into the backstory of the new American dictatorship.

By accident I started reading this book on January 21, 2005, the day after the fascist orange clown's second inauguration where a billionaire racist fucking asshole got on stage and gave a Hitler salute. Twice.



So the timing could not have been better.

The books starts with a horrific scene from a concentration camp which turns out to be not in Nazi Germany, but in the US. We are then introduced to our main protagonist John, a British-American agent, landed by submarine on the North Carolina shores in October 1940. His mission in Washington DC will hopefully increase the chance of the British winning the war against Nazi Germany. His goal is to assassinate David Stephenson, the vice president, in order to reduce the chances of the (on paper) neutral United States teaming up with Nazi Germany.

At this point I was fully on board.

And then the well-trained super spy immediately makes several mistakes (which will come back to haunt him for the rest of the story) so idiotic and out of character that I thought "Oh, it is going to be one of those books".

By the way, it was an odd choice to make John, who kills his first victim on page 36, a Quaker, a religious group dedicated to pacifism and non-violence. My first thought was that this choice (however unlikely) might be interesting. Perhaps he will be torn between his beliefs and his duties? Nope, no time for introspection, onwards and upwards. Not until the very end is there some kind of reflection.

I killed a policeman when I got to America. I don’t know if he was a good man or a bad man, whether he had a wife or kids, whether he’d have been kind to his black neighbours if his parents had brought him up differently. All I know is, I had to kill him, and I have to live with it.

The main antagonist is David Stephenson, a Ku Klux Klan leader cum vice president under Lindbergh. I don't think this was the best choice for several reasons.

First of all, the books tells us that history (as we know it) changed around the Depression, with Lindbergh and the Klan winning the 1932 election. By that point, the real Stephenson had already spent seven years in jail, having been sentenced to life in prison for second degree murder, abduction and rape in 1925.

Secondly, Stephenson is so cartoonishly evil. Not only is he a racist Nazi supporter, he's also a wife beater and pedophile. The author doesn't exactly work with grey scales.

Tuggmotstånd is a Swedish expression difficult to translate. It is literally translated as chewing resistance, meaning adding some complexity. Challenge the reader. Don't make it too easy to love or hate a character.

I couldn't help thinking how infinitely more interesting it would be if Stephenson, still being a racist Nazi supporter, had also been a loving husband and caring father (and perhaps even a nice man). Would David have any moral qualms about murdering such a man? Would his wife be as willing to help him?

The author obviously took a page from another (and far superior) alternate history novel, Fatherland by Robert Harris, where Odilo Globocnik, another true monster in real life, was cast as the main villain. The difference is that he, in contrast to Stephenson, serves a completely different role in that book. He is purely an external threat. As we don't see him outside of his plot function it doesn't really matter if he cuddles with puppies and helps old women cross the street. Stephenson however is more entangled in the protagonists' lives.

And instead of the usual suspects like Lindbergh it would have been more interesting if more perhaps normal people had been corrupted by the ideological shift. Like a James Stewart or Clark Gable or even Roosevelt himself. Going with Lindbergh and Klan members is pretty low hanging fruit.

In short (too late for that...) the descriptions of the new American society were great, parts of the plot pretty good, but it was lacking in character depth.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really really wanted to like this book because Daniel Easterman is really one of my favorite escape-reading authors. I thought the premise was good, and I will admit that the book held me in suspense, at least through the first few chapters, but overall, I didn't like it very much.

Here's the premise:
The KKK in 1932 backs their candidate, Charles Lindbergh, who succeeds in the presidential election rather than FDR. Lindbergh, known for his Aryan views, allows the KKK a great deal of power, and as the story opens, we find that Jews are in concentration camps in the US. Facism abounds and old southern prejudices are taken to new heights against African-Americans. Lynchings are not only legal, but they are advertised spectator events. At stake is US involvement with Hitler, siding with the Nazis in an alliance against other Europeans in WWII.

Sounds good, yeah? And parts of it were. But on the flip side, Easterman made some silly historical mistakes (especially at the end!!), and soemtimes the writing was a bit soap-opera-ish.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's a good alternate history type of novel, set in an America ruled by Charles Lindbergh while the Nazis are still at war in Europe. Mostly a spy thriller, the plot is cleverly built and unfolding -telling of a British spy set to stir a political chess game supposed to force the USA into the war on the Allies' side. Sadly, plot aside everything here tends to fall slightly apart -the characters are way too one-dimensional to be interesting and, the action turns ridiculously and crazily Hollywood action type of movies in the end! It's a pity as, the imagined fascist and violent regime of Lindbergh, chillingly supported by a state police controlled by J. Edgar Hoover and an all powerful KKK was all in all very well rendered. Well! It still makes for an interesting and entertaining read... Just don't expect too much.

[Christa · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was really bad. I have heard that other of his books are good but I cannot say too much positive about this book. First, I think a having a completely made up distopia would have been more interesting than taking what happened in the past and stretching it into fiction. Second, the author (and his editors) were asleep on the job. In spy fiction there should not be any glaring errors and in this book there were two - if the author cannot keep what is happening straight, then how is the reader going to keep the plot straight. Third, I couldn't have cared less about what would happen to the main characters. Over all, won't be picking up another book by Easterman anytime soon.

[Madge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Vastly interesting. Easterman writes a gripping piece of alternate history so well, it seems almost real. Issues mostly with the moral angle - the romance/adulterous affair wasn't necessary in my opinion, as well as the paedophiliac bits. Would it have augmented or completed Stephenson's monstrous aura by making him out to be an incestuous paedophile? Also, child suicide?
Just my two cents' worth.

[Tracey Alley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely chilling alternative history - Daniel Easterman writes such a realistic portrayal of an America on the verge of an alliance with Nazi Germany it is almost scary.
Well written, this is a real page-turner that I could not put down. It's a fairly old book and I personally don't think it ever achieved the recognition it deserves.
Highly recommended

[Thomas Sevastiadis · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was great in the beginning and through the middle when he was building the world and giving extra info about the details of this new world but I found myself less interested in the characters and how their stories turned out the more it went on. The more interesting part for me was the parts where he explained alternate historic details.

[Josh Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly imaginative alt-hist political thriller that puts Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" (which has a similar concept) to shame. The climax is a little rushed and the ending doesn't jive with the rest of the book, but other than that, I couldn't put it down.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

awesome and terrifying book.imagine if the KKK were in power when hitler went to war and they sided with the germans?

[Gary Stocker]

Quite scary to imagine if history had been different something like this could have happened.