P.I. Chester Drum is in Germany looking for Fred Severing, a man some think might be the next Vice-President of the United States. The trail had led him here and a story that went all the way back to WWII. Severing had been a member of a three man O.S.S. team that was supposed to distribute $200,000 in confiscated Nazi gold to a partisan group of their choosing.
Something had gone wrong and the leader of the mission, Kevin Keogh, had been killed in action and the gold went missing.
Drum pursues his assignment, all the while being used as bait by a German official, a young woman, Patti Keogh, who wants to find out what really happened to her father, a set of homicidal German twins, brother and sister, who want the money, and the son of a war criminal who’d just got out of prison after ten years.
Bodies keep turning up, Drum is fired, cut loose by the German official, bribed by the man he;s hunting(to no avail), all the while trying to keep a promise to a dying old man who believed.
I’ve only read a few of the Drums but have four more on hand. For more forgotten books, check out PATTINASE.