If you enjoy learning new facts about the people who made WWII happen and about life in Europe then this is a fount of knowledge. Good information about one family and their involvement in the war. It jumps between WWII and the authors association with a son of an important Austrian officer. Good book. ( )

Excellent narrator.

Part history, part guesswork... so not exactly a historically accurate account. Whish is OK I guess. I just didn't feel the need to finish it. It wasn't *that good*. I might try to read again, now knowing that I need to try to follow threads through the book better than I did before. Back and forth and these people then those people... just a lot of threads to follow in an audiobook.

So... not really war-rich but an intriguing detective tale of what happened after the war. If that's your thing this book is for you. Not my cup of tea. ( )

I learned a lot from this book about the escape of Nazis, often to South America, aided by the Vatican and the US. The last third or so of the book involved the author revisiting towns, houses, etc where the main character and his wife had lived, visited, hidden, that had already been mentioned in the narrative. Kind of a travelogue, less interesting. ( )

This was an eduational book regarding the lives of Nazis and community members before and after World War II. It showed in detail how much the Vatican and the Americans were involved in protecting some Nazis after the War. There was too much detail for me to be interested in the intricacies shown, but the overall picture was illuminating and depressing. ( )

I started Sands's previous book, but never got very far. I was bothered both by the unnecessary detail, and by Sands inserting himself into every page. Unfortunately, this book has the same flaws. Do we really need to know the street address of every building that any character has lived or worked in? And do we need to know Sands's account of every interview or archival dive he makes?

> I thought of Laurence Olivier removing teeth in the torture scene in the film Marathon Man. Later I realized I'd conflated it with a different film, The Boys from Brazil.

> I did not mention this when he met me at the airport, or over a lunch of spicy tacos. Nor did I mention it as we drank coffee in the branch of the Twisters restaurant that was used as the set of Los Pollos Hermanos, from Breaking Bad, one of my favorite television series.

Really? These details are bizarre. The underlying story itself is also underwhelming, in my opinion, not even worth a podcast (which Sands also made). I'm obviously missing something. ( )