"If Hitler thinks we are going to bow our heads and let him rule over Britain, then he can think again!"
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Mushroom Cloud by Alan Whichello Trafford Publishing
book review by Laura Roberts
Set during WWII, this story imagines a world where Germany has managed to develop a nuclear bomb and uses it to terrorize the UK into surrender. While this seems a reasonable enough premise, the rest of the storyline is fantasy. After a nuclear bomb is inexplicably dropped on Ireland, Winston Churchill surrenders to Adolf Hitler. British subjects are divided up with some sent to die in Ireland's radiation-poisoned wasteland, while the rest are sent to Spain as slave labor for a secret project aimed at taking down the U.S. from across the pond. Confusing forms of resistance abound, including a farming family that kills an upper-level SS officer but suffers no punishment for the crime, while the daughter manages to fall in love with the teenage soldier guarding the family for signs of treason. Native Irish survivors from the nuke attack seem to suffer no adverse effects, yet those dropped off by the Germans who wind up wandering too close to the blast zone become sick and die.
Albeit fantasy, the events depicted run against historic and scientific logic, and the end gambit is an explosive revenge plot in the vein of Inglourious Basterds. Characters are singular and dialog is dry, and more of the fanatical Fuhrer is required to build interest. What if Germany had won the war? It seems the answer here is that nothing really would have changed, and that is more difficult to imagine than many of the bizarre notions other writers have proposed.