ABSOLUTION

                                          Absolution
                                         by Steve Flanagan
                                 [Fiction - Mystery], 268 pages
A 79 year old former Nazi Auschwitz doctor, sole survivor of a N.H. plane crash, is saved from a chilling fate by an enigmatic woman known only as the Friend. Seeking absolution, he is aided by his nurse and an Auschwitz survivor, tracked by a premier Israeli Nazi hunter, and haunted by the horrors of his past.

     Klein walked to the stairway door and tried it. It was unlocked. He paused, contemplating for a moment on the quarry who was within his grasp.
     The man supposedly committed unspeakable atrocities, yet his victims protect him. He lives his whole life out in the open, under his own name, and nobody notices. At the age of eighty-nine, he survives a plane crash in which every other passenger dies. He's permanently crippled, but he gets up and walks away.   He cures the incurable, and brings the dead back to life!
     Murray Klein looked up the stairway at the dimly lit twentieth floor. Somehow, he knew that Karl Raynt, the man who had done all these things, went up these stairs.
     Somehow, he knew that he shouldn't!

     "What about me?"
     Her head moved side to side in warning. "You would have even less power than I."
     "I went there once! Is there any way I could go in again?"
     Fear showed in her eyes. "Only one...as an exchange!"
     Karl's brow arched. He thought about this for a moment. "Me...in a swap for Jama? Is there no way I could get out?"
     "I don't know." She told him. "It is a fearful place."
     "I know." he told the Friend. "I've been there before. Where do I get in?"
     The Friend studied Karl's eyes this time. They did not lie, either. She finally smiled at him, then pointed to the cemetery entrance.   "Through that gate is the land of the dead." she told him. "It is as alive as you are, but if Mengele can kill you in there, you will be his, forever. You must believe in your goodness, his evil...and your purpose. Love, and all that comes with it, is what he does not understand. Use that to defend yourself, if you can."
     Karl looked at the iron gates, then back at the Friend, returning her smile. "You knew that I would go in, didn't you?"
     "I believed that you would."
     "And that I have every intention of coming back out?"
     She nodded with intense conviction. "I believe that you can!"

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