The Second Objective, by Mark Frost
January 22, 2008 by Andrew
Just before Christmas 1944, the German Army attacked lightly defended Allied lines through the Ardennes Forest, driving a mixture of green American recruits and exhausted veterans back into Belgium. Accompanying the crack German units was a handful of English-speaking Germans, dressed in American uniforms and carrying forged papers. These men were commanded by the infamous Colonel Otto Skorzeny, whose lightning commando raids had already stunned the Allies. Skorzeny planned to use his men to capture and hold vital bridges, to sow confusion in the American rear, and to delay any counterattack.
Frost has taken these well-known events and added another element. If the first objective was to disrupt Allied defenses, the second objective was even more audacious – to get a German soldier all the way to Paris, find General Eisenhower, and kill him. Among the potential assassins chosen is a real sociopath, Erich Von Leinsdorf. Fresh from the death camp at Dachau, von Leinsdorf is a committed SS officer willing to take any measures to accomplish his goal. Accompanied by Bernie Oster, a German soldier born in New York, Von Leinsdorf crosses into Allied lines, killing freely to conceal his tracks. Even in the midst of a war zone, though, his killings attract attention from a New York homicide detective serving as an MP.
Frost takes the reader between Von Leinsdorf’s implacable progress towards his target, Captain Earl Grannit’s pursuit, and the larger historical view of panic, opportunism, and heroism that the Battle of the Bulge created. His ability to create twists and turns, set up coincidences that acquire larger significance, and develop his characters beyond the page make this a page-turner. No wonder it was just named an American Library Association Notable Book.
