Prague Spring - A Simon Wolfe Mystery
by: David Del Bourgo
The murder of a United States congressman’s son sends
Inspector Simon Wolfe of the San Francisco Police Department
on a pursuit in which he is blackmailed with his past as an
Israeli assassin. When Inspector Wolfe falls in love with the
dead boy’s psychiatrist and must protect her from a rogue Nazi
operative, he is forced to come to terms with his uncompromising
notions of justice that were formed when he was a prisoner in
Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
Prague Spring is a mystery/thriller that portrays a unique view of a Holocaust survivor. Its protagonist, Simon Wolfe, was part of the Ghetto Guard in Theresienstadt. After he escaped from the Nazis on the Auschwitz death march, he became a member of the Nokim, a group of Haganah assassins. Later he immigrated to the United States and joined the San Francisco Police Force. As a homicide inspector he wanted to redress the wrongs done to him and by him, by bringing murderers to justice.
The story takes place in 1968, during the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, with numerous flashbacks to young Simon before, during and after World War II. Background student demonstrations in Prague and Berkeley set the stage for Simon’s evolving dissidence. As Simon pursues the truth to solve the novel’s core mystery, he is pitted against his superiors in the SFPD, a congressman and an operative from the Gehlen Organization—a group of ex-Nazis who work for the CIA. With the mystery’s unraveling, questions arise about when it is just and moral to kill another human being, and what the psychic toll is for a person of conscience who murders under any circumstances.
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