Sergeant John Rossett is “a good man just doing a bad job.” A war hero, he returned to his prewar job as a cop in London only to be pressed into service in a distasteful job. The Nazis rule Britain, and they’ve forced him to work as a “Jew-catcher” in the Office of Jewish Affairs. Numb and despondent, he performs his duties mechanically until an old Jewish man maneuvers him into saving his young grandson. And soon Rossett finds himself defying his Nazi superiors and dodging the Gestapo as he takes ever greater chances to keep the boy from their clutches. But he finds all too quickly that the British Resistance represents an equally grave threat. Predictably, the Communists and the royalists are bitterly fighting for supremacy, with him caught in the middle. This is the scene first-time novelist Tony Schumacher sets in The Darkest Hour. It’s action-packed and satisfying despite trodding on ground familiar to any alternate history reader.
A cop slowly regains his humanity
Why is Rossett taking so many chances? “He felt he had purpose for the first time in years. . . . [H]e couldn’t save the boys who had died around him [at Dunkirk and on the shores of Kent]. . . . But he could try to save one boy, one mother’s son. . . . He had to try.” And thus, one cautious step at a time, he slowly regains his humanity as his boss and the Gestapo hunt for him with chilling efficiency. Meanwhile, too, he faces a grave threat from both of the warring factions in the Resistance. There is treachery on all sides, and no one to trust.
The Darkest Hour (John Rossett #1) by Tony Schumacher (2014) 464 pages ★★★★☆
How realistic is this novel?
Like several other alternate histories—Len Deighton’s SS-GB and Robert Harris’s Fatherland, for example—The Darkest Hour assumes that the Axis wins World War II. King Edward VIII sits on the throne. Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, lives in 10 Downing Street. And Winston Churchill is an exile in Canada. Presumably, the Nazis have replaced King George VI with his older brother, who in reality had abdicated a few years earlier. And they had successfully invaded Britain, installing the SS and the Gestapo to supervise local officials.
It’s true, certainly, that Britain’s survival was a near thing. Winston Churchill’s indomitable will prevailed against what seemed impossible odds. Had Neville Chamberlain persuaded his friend Lord Halifax to take on the job instead, Britain would have sued for peace. Halifax and Chamberlain both made that clear at the time.
But Schumacher’s (and other authors’s) assumption that Germany would have invaded England is wide of the mark. Not for any lack of desire on the Nazis’s part. Hitler ordered preparations for the Channel crossing, dubbed Operation Sealion. But Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe proved incapable of defeating the RAF in the Battle of Britain (although that, too, was a close thing). But in the absence of air superiority, an invading force would have been cut to pieces from the air. And Hitler was forced to call it off in the autumn of 1940, mere weeks from its scheduled start.
About the author
The Darkest Hour was Tony Schumacher‘s first novel. He has since written a second, The British Lion, and a third, An Army of One, both also featuring John Rossett. Schumacher was born in England in 1967. He worked as a police officer and taxi driver in Liverpool before launching his career as a writer. He has since written for magazines, newspapers, and film.
For related reading
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- These novels won both Hugo and Nebula Awards
- The ultimate guide to the all-time best science fiction novels
- The top science fiction novels
- The top 10 dystopian novels
- 10 new science fiction authors worth reading now
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