Hart's War (novel)

Hart's War is a novel by John Katzenbach, first published in 1999. It is about POWs in World War II. The movie of the same name, starring Bruce Willis, was produced in 2002.The film also starred Colin Farrell enacting Lieutenant Thomas Hart.

Tommy Hart is one of nearly ten thousand Allied kriegies ("war-captured") in Bavaria's fiercely guarded Stalag Luft Thirteen. The sole survivor of his crew after their B-25 was shot out of the sky, Tommy tries to forget the nightmarish guilt that plagues him in his dreams by throwing himself into studying the law and forging fast friendships with an accomplished English barrister and a Canadian policeman, both of whom are being held in the other half of the same camp. Tommy's--indeed the entire camp's--routine of staving off hunger, finding small comforts, and plotting escape is interrupted by the arrival of a black airman named Lincoln Scott. The aloof Lieutenant Scott quickly becomes the target of the contempt of his "fellow" American prisoners. His chief tormentor is Vincent Bedford, "Trader Vic," a decorated bomber captain from Mississippi and the man in camp who can get things, whether it be contraband or information. Everyone can see that hatred seethes between the two men.

When Bedford is found brutally but efficiently murdered, all the evidence, both circumstantial and hard, points straight at Scott. The Germans agree to allow the American prisoners to hold a trial, and Tommy is ordered to defend Lincoln Scott, who continues to insist on his innocence. But Tommy senses a railroad in progress; he feels he's supposed to do no more than make a show of defending Scott, that his superiors presume an open-and-shut case. The more Tommy comes to know Lincoln Scott, and the more he discovers about details of the case, the more convinced he is that secret motives are behind this rush to judgment. Tommy Hart will discover that those you name enemy can in truth be your ally—and vice versa.