Night Of Broken Souls

the long version

Monteleone, as we have come to expect, creates believable characters who draw the reader into fast-paced, well-plotted narrative written in a deceptively simple dark style. Although the book is cast as a thriller, it deals with the battle of Good versus Evil as much as Stephen King does in The Stand. From the multiple viewpoints of Monteleone's characters -- a cabby, an audio technician, a homemaker, a self-made businesswoman, a secret agent -- we glimpse nightmares in which they all remember dying in the Holocaust, sadistically tortured by Der Klein Engel, a Jewish minion of the monster Mengele. None of the terrified dreamers are Jewish and none were born before World War II. All are experiencing bizarre blackouts. Psychiatrist Dr. J. Michael Keating begins to discover more than synchronicity as patients describe these disturbances. The work of a federally funded Ph.D. uncovers the sickening reality behind the dreams and an FBI agent and a rabbi discover that the dreamers are being shockingly and systematically killed, each with a death-camp tattoo appearing on the bodies.