Review of The Firehand File, Bob van Laerhoven
(Next Chapter, 2026). ASIN: B0GGXYZVRD Over the years, I have come to expect a lot from Bob van Laerhoven’s novels and this one not only doesn’t disappoint—it might just be the best one yet. The prologue begins in Munich in April 1920 with an evocative diary entry by an unidentified author, written to a dead brother about his murdered dog; it’s barely a page. The novel repeatedly returns to excerpts from the diary, identifying the author only as a rabid antisemite who identifies with Parcival, the Grail Quests, Lohengrin, and the Spear of Destiny and who twists the words of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to suit his warped, weaponized Weltanschauung . Chapter one opens in April 1921, when antisemitism was already ubiquitous, with lyrics from a cabaret song about cocaine. It’s a time when the “People’s Court” in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison still dispenses “justice” by beheading. A German psychiatrist eyes an exotic, “half-Chinese” woman in the sweltering heat with obvious add...