Outrunning Hitler

Outrunning Hitler is set in Berlin in 1936. The famous young Negro sprinter, Jesse Owens, is heading to the 1936 Berlin Olympics to prove he is the fastest man alive and, in the process, demonstrate the Nazi theories of racial superiority are rubbish-even as Hitler watches from the stands, seething.

But FDR fears der Fuhrer may not let the young runner live long enough to humiliate him in front of the whole world. So he arranges for a bodyguard: his personal private agent, David Nathan, a NYC police detective the President has often sent on dangerous missions.

On the ocean voyage to Germany, Nathan, under cover as a sports writer, searches for threats to Owens, but finds none. He also acquires a friend-Richard Helms, a young journalist-as well as a complication, the beautiful and flirtatious Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm.

In Berlin, Nathan finds himself pitted against the deadly schemes of Hitler's three most dangerous minions, Goebbels, Goring and Reinhard Heydrich-each plotting to get rid of Jesse Owens.

With Eleanor at his side, Nathan time and time again thwarts the diabolical dirty tricks, the staged "accidents" and the assassination attempts. The book climaxes in a gun battle between Nathan and a trained Nazi assassin at the very moment Jesse Owens is running to break a world's record.

All this is set the backdrop of 1930s Berlin, mundane and exotic, with mordant echoes of Weimar permissiveness and the specter of Nazi tyranny, both masked by the pageantry and thrill of the Olympic games.

The cast of characters includes Lindbergh, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Helms, and a platoon of famous sports writers, among them Grantland Rice and Quentin Reynolds.