Climate of Hell

Hardcover: 383 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (October 15, 1978) Deep within Paraguay -- sometimes in Asuncion enjoying the august protection and esteem of El Jefe, the President, sometimes hiding out in the remote jungles along the Parana River when there has been too much publicity or a new attempt at revenge, occasionally gambling in the casino at Bariloche or dancing at the Tirol club in Hohenau -- lives El Gran Fugitivo, El Doctor Misterioso, Don Gregor. He is, in fact, SS Obersturmbann-fuhrer Doktor Helmut Gregor Schlakstro, Fausto Rindon, Father Capezius (Carmelite OCF) and Dr. Joseph Neiditch, and he is wanted by West Germany, the Allied Powers and Israel for "atrocious crimes committed while serving as Chief Physician at Auschwitz -- Birkenau." The Climate of Hell is a terrifying, brilliant and savagely realistic novel about a group of people whose lives, by design or by accident, suddenly intersect with that of the good doctor in his exile. Baumstein is an American businessman, absconding to the small Latin American nation after a successful embezzlement, who has the misfortune to come to the doctor's attention. An Auschwitz survivor, he is a potential threat. The beautiful Fraulein Aldot, the doctor's constant partner, is in fact Dovia, an Israeli agent -- and a real threat. Ian Asher, under his many aliases, is the greatest threat of all: a young man who has dedicated his life to revenge and who sees, in the planned visit to Paraguay of Dr. Grigori's son, a respectable West German haunted by his father's dreadful past, the opportunity for a revenge so macabre, so convincing, so terrible and so just that even Grigori is unprepared for it (as is the reader). Only Herbert Lieberman, the gifted author of Crawlspace and City of the Dead, could have imagined it. Seldom has there been a novel of such spine-tingling authenticity, horror and suspense. It is, quite simply, impossible to put down and impossible to forget.