Bryan and James, two inseparable friends, are pilots for the RAF. During a mission in Germany, they are shot down and find themselves lost and disoriented in this enemy country. Adventure is adventure! That’s exactly what is going to happen to them.
Through various subterfuges, they find themselves on a German medical train and then in a psychiatric hospital where the doctors use the injured, all SS officers, for experiments on these human guinea pigs. The two friends survive amidst this world of hatred and sadism. Some are pretenders, feigning madness to avoid returning to the front.
They are English; how do they manage to deceive the German doctors and caregivers? One speaks the language of Goethe, the other does not. It’s enough to act crazy; the tree indeed hides the forest! Time passes, thirty years, it is now 1972 during the Munich Olympics, Bryan returns to Germany to try to find James.
During the war, they had assumed the identity of German officers. Today, those who were the perpetrators working in that hospital have also changed their identities. The pretenders do not really wish to be identified. Bryan will thus delve into the past to try to find James. But time has faded memories.
It is this quest for the past that we try to rediscover in this novel with a captivating pace, to find James, despite all the dangers and perils this will entail for Bryan.
Thierry Jan, writer
