Thomas Gifford (1937–2000)

A Reich Reborn. Hitler lost the war. This the world knows. What the world doesn't know is that some Nazi survivors view their defeat as a mere temporary setback. Their plans have long been in motion. Their key personnel are in place inside the corporations and capitals of every major nation. By the end of this century, it will all be theirs.
John Cooper is an heir to this evil, an evil he thought he'd turned his back on. Until now. For the dark legacy has finally caught up with him, show more thrusting into his hands a secret too explosive to be kept. As he races against time a figure from his past, insubstantial as a whisper, will be revealed to him. And for a single electrifying moment Cooper's fate, and the fate of billions, will hang in the terrifying balance. show less

This showed promise on the back, a secret order of assassins, operating with the connivance of the top echelons of the catholic church, ruthless machinations, but no, it didn't quite work. The story got bogged down on celibacy, unthinking faith and some stuff that went on for too long. Billed as "as shocking as the Da Vinci Code" that tag is obviously to generate sales on the coat-tails of the other book.

It could have been a very good read but instead it dragged on and on occasionally and show more then you would blink and miss an important bit. Not bad but nothing exceptional in it's genre. show less

If it hadn't dragged on for quite so long, it would have been a much more enjoyable read. The premise was a very good one, I just feel that there were several parts that could have been left out entirely and still had the same, if not a better, effect.

London, 1940, an age of darkness and terror. Hitler's armies re marching across Europe and North Africa, crushing all in their path and the fate of the British Empire, of Western civilization, hangs in the balance. Prime Minister Winston Churchill has set into motion a daring plan, a raid, code=named Praetorian that will send a tea of handpicked commandos into the desert to assassinate German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. It is a mission doomed to failure. And for two men, and the woman they show more both love, the debacle will exact a bitter and terrible toll.
The friendship between Max Hood, hero of the empire who rode alongside T.E. Lawrence in Arabia, and the young American correspondent Rodger Godwin was forged in the 1920s in Paris,city of Hemingway, hot jazz and free love. It was there that they both met a girl alluring beyond her years, Pricilla DewBrittain, Cilla, who by 1940 would be a star of the British screen, Max Hod's wife and the secret love Godwli's life. Now Hood has been chosen to command the attack on Rommel's headquarters, and Godwin has been offered an exclusive on the story. At Churcill's personal request, the American accepts an active role in the assassination of the Desert Fox. But the Nazis lie in ambush. The plan has been betrayed.
Consumed by his desire for Cilla and his guilt over the outcome of Operation Praetorian, Godwin vow to track down the traitor and kill him. His search for revenge is driven by obsession, one that draws him into a labyrinth of political intrigue and private passions. Gradually Godwin begins to discover how little he really knew: the truth about Hood, about Cilla, about himself, about the secrets share between one man and another and between a man and a woman, about the primal urges that move through history, sex, power, and violence. show less