Derek Hart
Tangles of Truth
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Hauptmann Rolf Leutnart is a German staff officer with the famed Afrika Korps and is General Erwin Rommel’s favorite interpreter, fluent in Italian, French, and English. Leutnart is immediately assigned as the primary translator for the Italian and German senior officers.
While in Tunisia, Rolf meets and falls in love with Lorena Sebesta, an Italian Red Cross nurse. For her, however, the attraction is difficult, since she despises uniforms and especially Germans. However, the relationship grows and soon develops into a torrid love affair.
As the tide of the desert war turns in favor of the vaunted Afrika Korps, Rolf distinguishes himself in battle, turning back a British breakthrough with his leadership. He is awarded the Iron Cross and also meets Lorena’s brother, Major Antonio Sebesta, who commands an Italian commando unit. Their friendship and professional regard for each other’s skills, leads Leutnart to propose a small, highly maneuverable special unit for reconnaissance, which is approved by Rommel.
At about this time, Rolf is approached by several shadowy figures who hint at things more sinister and possibly supernatural in Rolf’s background. He is tied to a birthmark in the shape of a wolf’s head, a secret society known only as the Red Pyramid, and an ancient curse from Egypt that has awaited his arrival for 5,000 years.
To complicate things even further, the first SS elements arrive in North Africa and with them comes Major Ernst Dorfmann, a sadistic Nazi with a love of animals, a passion for torture, and ties to the occult. He is the perfect Nazi icon and takes an immediate perverse interest in Lorena.
Then history spins the tables and at El Alamein, Rommel stalls on his advance to Cairo and Alexandria. The British counterattack, and in a desperate attempt to disrupt the Allies, Rommel sends Rolf’s unit across the wastelands of the Qattara Depression, to attack the English rear. However, this operation lends Dorfmann the perfect opportunity to kidnap Lorena and use her as a sacrifice to appease ancient evil beings.
In a titanic battle that stretches from Egypt, across the savannas of central Africa, then even the mid-Atlantic Ocean, to climax at a long-lost temple in the Brazilian jungles, Rolf, Lorena, and Antonio challenge monstrosities from ages only dreamed of. Amidst a planet torn apart by a world war and tremendous earth-shattering events, plain old everyday people are asked to make sacrifices for justice, faith, and especially love.
Rolf’s past arises from the ashes of time, as he takes up sword and ax, to wage combat with demons, giant reptiles, and the wicked sorceress Nefastani. It’s a duel between wolf and snake, with muscle and instinct versus treachery and black magic.
Here then is a tale of love across time, challenged by the past, present and future. These characters interact amidst World War II, fighting for the Axis, the eventual losers of this terrible war. Yet they are human, caught up in the questions of right and wrong, evil faced off against good. The choices they make have personal and global impact.
Recent Review
Long ago Pharaoh Aha Menes united the two kingdoms of Egypt, though first he had to conquer the evil serpent-god Apep and his shape-changing priestess Nefastani, whose one weakness was a warrior for whom she had long and jealously lusted. But Assiout loved the beautiful Rena, despite the divisions and doubts Nefastani had sown between them, and barely paused in the swing that severed her head. Unfortunately, evil cannot be so easily destroyed, though it was centuries before there arose an evil great enough to rouse Nefastani and her snake-god from their slumber.
Among Hitler’s Third Reich forces is Rolf Leutnart, an interpreter born of an Austrian father and an Italian mother, an enthusiastic student of archaeology and ancient history who has managed to get assigned to the Afrika Korps under General Irwin Rommel. In Tripoli, he meets and recognizes his destiny in Red Cross nurse Lorena Sebesta, a widow who has no use for war or warriors. Until Rolf. Fight it though she may, she cannot resist the powerful attraction between them, the kindness and wit she sees in him, no matter the uniform he wears. Against the backdrop of the battles for supremacy in North Africa, Rolf pursues his nurse, becomes invaluable to his general and in the process, an unintentional hero. Still, no amount of acclaim will reconcile Lorena to who and what he stands for and, in the end, he decides that having her is worth anything, including desertion. But their flight for freedom is fraught with sadistic SS, ancient curses, sandstorms, reborn malevolence, heat and thirst, and the malignant Nefastani, who is still bent on getting him and on ending the world. Not necessarily in that order.
Wonderfully rich in characters and description, this tale drags you into the arid world of the African desert, its people and its hardships, painting a realistic and brutal picture that will keep you turning pages until the very last. Between Rolf’s varied adventures in interpretation and his desperately steamy love affair, the rigors of combat and the resurgence of ancient evil, there is little left to desire. Mr. Hart’s presentation of the legendary Rommel is quirky but accurate, an irresistible fillip to his narrative of daring-do and desperate struggle against the evil of madmen and the madness of true evil. Few have limned a menace to turn the stomach, nor conceived so loathsome yet fascinating a Bad Guy as the repulsively seductive, ruthlessly bloodthirsty Nefastani. The nice blending of themes makes for a gratifying suspense and an uncommon wartime romance, to which he adds a fine empathy, not alone for the lovers, but for much of the supporting cast. Whether you like a little goo with your romance, a little romance with your action, or a little action with your ooze, Tangles of Truth is bound to satisfy.
Kaththea Spurlock
LoveRomances.com