SS World

Tom and Sarah, travelling from New York to London in the year 2015, find themselves victims of transporter malfunction, deposited in a parallel universe where the Nazis have won World War II and the 1000 Year Reich is in its 75th year.

Dicks explores the regime with dramatic gusts as Tom and Sarah try to dodge the SS and find a way of returning to their own universe. Moral dilemmas are examined, too, when they discover that their parallel-universe father is a high ranking SS official and a man with a conscience.

The action is satisfyingly frantic, interspersed with domestic scenes which illustrate the realities of Nazi rule in a more intimate way. Boys, especially, will respond to Dicks’ punchy style and relish the neat twist teasingly placed at the very end of the novel.