The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin is a great, thrilling read. Some books are hard to put down - this book grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go. This book is taut, harrowing, powerful, thought-provoking and detail oriented. Levin has created a masterpiece of the genre and it shows through the ridiculously tense scenario he perfectly plots. One of the reasons the book works so effectively - in just nine precise chapters - is his plot is semi-plausible and a good mixture of fact and fiction. He begins with a cabal of former Nazi's in Brazil led by the infamous Josef Mengele - he has a plan and needs their help. Before long, an aging Nazi hunter is investigating a series of mysterious murders and trying to piece the puzzle of Mengele's plan together.
If there is a better example of how a thriller should be written I have yet to find it.
Levin's vision is brilliantly crafted and builds a plausible scenario that incorporates what Mengele was doing at Aushwitz and how deeply engrained the Nazi ideology was in South America at the war's conclusion and on into the seventies.
Evocative, haunting and literally impossible to put down.
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