Guess who's coming to the 1943 Teheran peace conference.

Hint: It's not Bob Hope.

		"HITLER?S PEACE" By Philip Kerr Putnam. ($26.95)

In this history-bending mystery, Philip Kerr poses the prospect that the Nazis were ready to make a deal with Stalin and Roosevelt. Churchill was not interested.

Kerr is known for his "Berlin Noir" trio of historical novels featuring those lovable Third Reich jokesters Himmler and Goering.

Although even der Fuehrer shows up in Kerr's latest, the central character is Willard Mayer, an OSS operative fluent in German from his Berlin student days.

And true to the spy genre, he's pretty fluent in bed, as well.

The president taps him to analyze a German document detailing the Katyn Forest massacre in which thousands of Poles were executed by the Soviets. It's an attempt to undermine U.S.-Russian relations as they fight the Nazis.

Meanwhile back in the Fatherland, Himmler and other thugs are plotting to blow up the Big Three at the Teheran conference. Commandos are dispatched to Iran.

Gradually, all roads lead to the Iranian capital, with our hero Mayer accompanying the president. There's been a handful of killings en route, including one aboard the presidential yacht, aka the battleship Iowa.

Mayer, a philosopher professor, is quickly learning how to be a detective as well.

Kerr knows his World War II history, including suspicious doings in Iran at the time of the Big Three get-together that could be construed as one kind of a plot or another.

It's this knowledge coupled with a complicated story and believable portrayals of those larger-than-life characters (although I doubt FDR would use the f-word) that make Kerr's new novel a fascinating and intelligent thriller.

Spy yarn

bends history