“Midnight Burning – An Einstein-Chaplin Thriller” by Paul Levine
I never knew that Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin were friends. Their unlikely friendship was one of the truths in the fictional story “Midnight Burning – An Einstein-Chaplin Thriller,” by Paul Levine. This was an unusual book because of how it mixed fact with fiction. The backdrop was real. It was set in Los Angeles of the 1930s during Hitler’s rise in Europe. The homegrown neo-Nazi group known as the Silver Shirts was also real. The antisemitic hate speech that the Silver Shirts regurgitated in the book was all too real. The story was filled with real people, such as silent-film star Douglas Fairbanks, famous for his swashbuckling role as Robin Hood. As depicted in the book, Fairbanks lived next door to Charlie Chaplin in Beverly Hills. The movie stars both lived on estates that were so large they were given names like Pickfair.
Einstein and Chaplin were friends in real life, but they never teamed up as buddy detectives! Their crime-fighting partnership was the author’s idea. Einstein was the brains, and Chaplin was the nimble athlete. Author Paul Levine wondered what it would be like if they worked together to save Los Angeles from a neo-Nazi group that was planning a major operation in Hollywood.
The book’s 375 pages were fast-moving. Levine used short chapters that quickly moved the reader to new locations. Each chapter included the title of the new location, such as “Chaplin Estate Tennis Court,” where Einstein and Chaplin sat courtside, drinking lemonade and eating cucumber sandwiches while discussing the possibility of the Germans developing a nuclear bomb. The juxtaposition of tone got my attention. I found the banter between Einstein and Chaplin entertaining and witty, while the historical events happening around them were ominous.
We traveled all around Los Angeles, including Beverly Hills, Hollywood Boulevard, the German Consulate (Konsulat von Deutschland), the lesser-known Wrigley Field in South LA, Malibu and many other locations. One chapter started in the ballroom at the German Consulate, and the next chapter jumped over to what was happening outside on the Flagstone Path. It was like having access to multiple cameras that flipped back and forth, so we could see all of the action.
The American neo-Nazi group in the story wanted to get Hitler’s attention. They plotted large-scale assassinations against prominent Jews in the film industry and others who were outspoken against the Nazis. In the book, they also destroyed and desecrated a synagogue. Several of the characters were based on real people, such as William Dudley Pelley, who founded the Silver Legion of America, the fascist paramilitary group also known as the Silver Shirts. Imagine a scene that at first glance looked like a fraternity keg party, until you spotted the swastikas and heard the frat brothers casually spilling out hate speech against Jews and African Americans.
Einstein and Chaplin could only find one police officer they could trust within a tsunami of corruption. The police sergeant was based on a historical figure, Georgia Ann Robinson, the first Black female LAPD officer. If neo-Nazis weren’t bad enough, America was going through a period of Communist paranoia. The police and the FBI formed Red Squads that searched for “Communist subversives.” In one scene, a corrupt police officer found it easy to cover up a Nazi explosion by blaming it on the Communists. The story included many corrupt or inept officials who were all too willing to close a murder case of an African American reporter by calling it a suicide.
Einstein and Chaplin didn’t accept the official explanations. Instead, they used their unique abilities to investigate. They often jumped into the fray without much of a plan. Levine featured Einstein’s and Chaplin’s real-life talents to get them out of fictional and tight situations. Einstein used his knowledge of physics and his powers of scientific observation to figure out the clues. He was a bit of a Sherlock Holmes. Chaplin used his physicality with his incredible balance and acrobatic skills that were on full display when he performed his own stunts in his silent films. In the story, he made a major climb up a tall building’s construction scaffolding. Most of the time, they found themselves with very little backup, since almost all the people in authority couldn’t be trusted.
There was a recurring subplot with Chaplin working on his satirical film about Hitler titled “The Great Dictator.” This was based on a real film by the same name that Chaplin released in 1940. The Germans used film as propaganda, and it’s an understatement to say they were not happy with Chaplin and how Hitler would be portrayed in his new film.
I enjoyed Einstein’s and Chaplin’s discussions about morality and ethics. Is it the right thing to do to help the Americans develop the nuclear bomb? Einstein lamented that his formulas and theories would be used to build such a horrible weapon. Einstein called himself a pacifist. What is a pacifist to do when there is a possibility of Hitler’s Germany developing the bomb first?
The author must have known that people would wonder who was a real person and who was fictitious, so he included a final chapter called “Afterword.” He wrote a paragraph about each of the major characters, explaining whether they were based on a real person or created for the story. He included a short bio when the character was based on a real person. I appreciated that the author gave the reader the opportunity to learn some of the history.
Paul Levine is an experienced action thriller writer. From 1990 to 2023, he wrote twelve popular “Lassiter” thrillers, starring lawyer and former professional football player Jake Lassiter. He writes snappy dialogue and keeps the action moving. His action sequences in this Einstein-Chaplin thriller were almost matter-of-fact, describing what he saw. He let the gruesome details speak for themselves, and I found it very effective.
