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What a Pageturner! Feb 11, 2007
This is also an eye-opening book. not just a pageturner. I couldn't put it down, just had to keep reading to find out what would happen next. It's an incredibly real story, something that could happen to you and your family or mine, yet because of the subject matter, there is something surrealistic about it at the same time. Definitely worth buying and reading for anyone who is a fan of fast-paced action novels.
THE HALLERVORDEN COLLECTION Apr 02, 2006
I found this story very entertaining and quite startling. Parts of it were nothing less than gripping. As well, it is often very light and humorous: the author lets one relax and laugh in between more distressing sections of his story.
I have done quite a bit of reading of WW II and am familiar with the key part that psychiatry played in the well known horrors of that time. In this book, the link between psychiatry then and now and the state of the society as a result of psychiatry then and now was excellently presented.
In the past couple of decades I have read stories written by WW II survivors, or comments by actors in a WW II role, or directors and one for one they say "we have to keep alert and prevent such things from happening again" or something of that nature. I always get the idea they just sort of turn around and go home with the mistaken idea that nowadays such things are not occurring and further that they absolutely cannot occur.This book by Stephen Ferry quickly disabuses one of those incorrect ideas.
An excellent book Oct 02, 2004
The Hallervorden Collection is both a hair-raising thriller and a vital eye-opener that should be studied broadly because it is more than a novel: it is a mirror on our own society.
The writer reveals a gruesome, covert game being played beneath the social veneer of the western democracies: a game that has undermined human rights and caused the decline of our culture.
To make his point, Steven Ferry describes sequences from Hitler's Germany, following a few memorable characters in their desperate efforts to make the allies see the Nazi horrors that the allies, blinded by German propaganda, cannot see. The plot moves on to two young Americans who have stumbled upon the efforts of the early German resistance, and can't help seeing parallels with American society today. Their search in Germany leads them to the inescapable conclusion that the hidden forces behind the Nazis are still dictating events today not only in Germany, but the western democracies. The question is, can they escape with their lives and communicate their findings to a skeptical world, blinded by the same propaganda, before it is too late?
This book was written in the late 1990s, and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the war on terror, and the efforts in 2004 to create mandatory psychiatric screening and drugging of all Americans under the "New Freedom Commission on Mental Health," only serve to show that the author is ahead of his time, while writing in the tradition of George Orwell's mind-numbing predictions of 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
As an individual who has spent her life fighting these forces of social control and repression of individual liberties, and who witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany first hand, I have no doubt that this novel is more than a novel. It is a wake-up call, because the noose, once again, is tightening around our freedoms.
The message may be deadly serious, but it is conveyed in an upbeat, eloquent, and fast-paced style: a thriller that serves up hope, despair, great excitement, tragedy, humor and love in memorable characters.
Read it!
Gun Lanciai, Denmark.
(my friend Gun, who has no email, asked me to send this review from my computer. Rebecca)
The Price of Freedom Nov 16, 2002
The Hallervorden Collection is a powerful story told at a pace that does not let up. The author's masterful use of language and skill as a storyteller take the reader outside his or her own time and culture to lay bare the truths about the timeless struggle between good and evil, and then returns him with a jolt to the present, more aware and questioning.Using the alarming increase of NeoNazism in today's Germany as a springboard, the novel follows the heroine, Maia Dietrich, on a trail that leads eventually to an unlikely group that was behind Hitler's excesses, and which is still promoting the same ideas from positions of power around the world. Although the background that plays out may be alarming, it is based on well-researched fact, with dramatic license taken only for the main characters and their experiences. The Hallervorden Collection, for instance, does exist. It was the subject of a CNN report on October 7, 1997. But there is another side to this novel that is completely refreshing and takes this story beyond Ludlum or Clancy. The main characters have a clarity and vitality that makes them heroes of a different caliber. Their values and understandings are clear, and their emotions, subtle or raw, are palpable. While the theme is deadly serious and cerebral, the book is not. It contains lighthearted and exciting moments, with enough suggestions of sex and violence to keep the readers' baser instincts intact. The author's insouciance and irrepressible sense of humor and understanding of the positive side of life, shine through, making the novel a celebration of life. The moments of innocent love, the delightfully idiosyncratic life style of the wealthy Hollywood film director, the love and caring of family, and many poignant vignettes of ordinary life provide a reality and relief that makes clear why the ugly, the evil and bad must be overcome.
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