This review originally appeared on Goodreads on July 4, 2012.

Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy

By Dennis Detwiller – Armitage House – March 1, 2004

Review by Robin Marx

This was an interesting book, but it has some issues. As a game tie-in it's not very friendly to newcomers, the main plot isn't as exciting as an early subplot, and it over-promises for such a slender volume. That being said, I enjoyed what Detwiller tried to accomplish, and both the beginning and ending were quite strong.

This book is for established fans only. This book is billed as “A Cthulhu Mythos Novel of World War II,” and familiarity with the work of H.P. Lovecraft (particularly his Mythos stories “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family” and “The Shadow Out of Time”) are effectively required to comprehend this story. Some knowledge of the Delta Green campaign setting for the Lovecraft-inspired Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game is also advisable if you want to get the most enjoyment out of the story.

After a cryptic prologue about an aged military officer contemplating suicide, the story gets very interesting, very quick. We're introduced to a member of the Ahnenerbe, a (historical) Nazi organization dedicated to occult study. It soon becomes clear that he's been left disaffected and not a little mentally unstable by his studies, and that he's just biding his time until he can defect to the Allies and throw a monkey wrench in the Axis's literal scorched earth strategy. The narrative takes him to a coastal town in occupied France, where he becomes an unwilling bystander to the Ahnenerbe's efforts to broker an alliance with the Deep Ones, mutant fish-men introduced in Lovecraft's “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The close encounters with the Deep Ones are very creepy and obliquely written, Detwiller does an excellent job portraying the characters' sanity leach away through close proximity with the unknowable. Here we had unhinged (yet sympathetic) people committing atrocities to curry favor with disturbing allies; this was the peak of the book for me, it's a shame it came so early.

Unfortunately, the Deep Ones section of the book comes to an abrupt end as the books' true protagonists arrive on the scene: Delta Green, a subdivision of the OSS tasked to deal with supernatural threats. The story to follow is still fun—particularly if you enjoy Delta Green—but after such an atmospheric build-up it felt like a vaguely disappointing bait-and-switch. The story's true antagonists are somewhat undefined, and the primary plot twist towards the end seemed poorly foreshadowed, with baffling motivations.

In the end, the story ends up being a Call of Cthulhu story set during World War II, rather than a “Cthulhu Mythos novel of World War II”. There are two slight distinctions here. One is that readers hoping for an grand reveal of the occult side of World War II will be disappointed; this book is nowhere near that epic in scope. The second distinction is that—perhaps unsurprisingly, given the origins of the Delta Green property—Denied to the Enemy leans more towards the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos than Lovecraft. I counted about five different creature types appearing over the course of the story, while most literary Mythos authors tend to limit themselves to one or two. While monster-spotting is sort of fun for RPG fans, some of the cameos were a little gratuitous, like attempts at fan service. (Don't have the Tcho-Tchos show up if you're not going to do anything with them!)

If you're already a Delta Green fan, by all means give this book a shot. But if you're not, this book won't turn you into one.

★★★☆☆

#CapsuleReviewArchive #BookReview #Horror #CosmicHorror #CthulhuMythos #HPLovecraft #DeltaGreen #DeniedToTheEnemy #DennisDetwiller