Rory Clements

I think this is the best of Clements' books so far. Set in Munich in the 30s when Hitler was on the rise and hundreds of young, well-bred men and women, high-born, travelled to the city as a sort of finishing school/playground. What we enter is the underbelly of the rich and well-connected with Unity Mitford floating around hanging onto Hitler, Volkisch myths and legends and people with dark desires.

Into this steps Sebastian Wolff, a detective who does not follow the thinking about Jews or show more homosexuals, and who has been thrown into Dachau by the political police. He is rescued because a young English woman is murdered and he speaks fluent English due to his time working on board an English ship. There is always an added challenge and here he has to work with a new partner, the man who placed him in Dachau.

Clements gives his characters an interesting home life. Here Wolff has a son, Jurgen, who is a member of the Hitler Youth and can't understand why his father doesn't see the 'rightness' of their actions ending up in the relationship between father and son fractured. When Jurgen needs his help, it mends slightly but there are still the political differences between them. This must have been mirrored in families up and down the country at the time.

The book exemplifies rough justice throughout and that is how the crimes are resolved but that would be par for the course if one group of people is held to be 'superior' to another. What do you do with them when they obviously aren't? You use the thugs and your position of power, in this instance closeness to Hitler, to disappear people.

It almost feels like there is another book to follow because we don't really get to the point of knowing explicitly, who gave the orders at the end. It feels like it should be followed up in the next book but I think this is a standalone novel so maybe not. That's a pity because this was a good twisty, well-plotted story and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

You might also enjoy The Man in The bunker and The English Fuhrer. show less

On vacation in the US Professor Tom Wilde is surprised to be summoned to the White House for a discussion with FDR. Although american, Wilde has been involved with the British secret services and, as Europe teeters on the edge of war, he is now asked to be the eyes and ears of his homeland in his adopted Cambridge. Meanwhile as German physicists escape from Germany, the Nazis are concerned about the development of nuclear weapons and target the Cavendish Laboratory in a link with the IRA.

I show more am a huge fan of Clements work, both in his earlier Tudor series and now with the Tom Wilde books. Clements has a knack of putting together a suitably complex plot line that ties in with known historical fact and a set of flawed protagonists that the reader engages with. I love the knowing links between the two sets of stories - Wilde is an expert on Walsingham, the Tudor spymaster - and I find this era of history fascinating. The involvement of the IRA in Nazi plotting was new to me but felt right in this book. show less

1945 and that War is over, for Tom Wilde a return to Cambridge academia but regrets that his wartime unit the OSS has been disbanded. However Tom is called by his old boss at MI5 Lord Templeman and asked to keep an eye on a Cambridge fellow who has links to the British Fascist Movement. Meanwhile a deadly cargo has been landed on the Norfolk Coast and plans are afoot to cause chaos as Britain tries to recover.

I love Clements books and this is no exception. The plot is clever and twisty with show more lots of blind alleys and changing politics, it sheds light on the complexities of post-War politics and the murkier side of reconstruction. I also really liked the focus on the roles of women - from the wives with their varying duties, the ambitions of some and the political power of others - there was a real insight into the difficulties of the women who had been left behind but who gained some forms of independence without men. An impressive book on many levels show less

A young Englishwoman has been killed in a brutal and ritualistic way and Munich policeman Wolf has been put in charge of the case. He is shocked to find that his partner will be the SS Officer who only recently placed him in Dachau on trumped up charges. With the SS looking to discredit him, Wolf's family connections are the only thing keeping him on the streets. However when a man is wrongly convicted and executed for the crime, Wolf realises that to find the truth he will have to confront show more those at the heart of the Nazi Party.
I do really like Clements' writing as he manages to interweave great historical and political knowledge with a cracking plot and this is no exception. Staying with the theme of the rise of the Third Reich, he switches to Munich during the mid-1930s to create what is essentially a police procedural but one with a wonderfully evocative and troubling setting. This is a master thriller writer at the top of his game. show less