FICTION

PIOUS SECRETS by Irene Dische (Viking: $18.95; 147 pp.). How’s this for a premise? Adolf Hitler didn’t die in his Berlin bunker in 1945 but is alive and well in suburban New Jersey. In this short, off-the-wall novel, Irene Dische uses this unlikely theme as a springboard to explore the network of secrets that all of us harbor. “Pious Secrets” doesn’t bother its head about how such an escape might have taken place. The story centers on Dr. Ronald Hake, a New York City forensic pathologist who becomes convinced that the father of his colleague and lover, Connie Bauer, is indeed Der Fuhrer--a retiring but still cantankerous Austrian named Carl Bauer. Dische has some insightful things to say about lies and truths and the thin line that separates them, moral certainties, Jewish paranoia and Catholic guilt. Is Carl Bauer really Hitler? Or a look-alike playing out a tabloid headline? Or does it matter?