Literary Digest LITERARY DIGEST MAY 2020 | Page 18

Thundering thrillers from World War 2
THAT YOU MIGHT’VE MISSED READING
Ken Follett follows his bestsellers Jackdaws and Code to Zero with an
extraordinary novel of early days of World War II...It is June 1941 and the war
is not going well for England. Across the North Sea, eighteen-year-old Harald
Olufsen takes a shortcut on the German-occupied Danish island of Sande an
discovers an astonishing sight that will change the momentum of the war. He
must get word to England-except that he has no way to get there. He has only
an old derelict Hornet Moth biplane rusting away in a ruined church: a plane so
decrepit that it is unlikely ever to get off the ground...even if Harald knew how
to fly it.
D-Day is approaching. They don’t know where or when, but
the Germans know it’ll be soon, and for Felicity “Flick”
Clariet, the stakes have never been higher. A senior agent in
the ranks of the Special Operations Executive (SOE)
responsible for sabotage, Flick has survived to become one
of Britain’s most effective operatives in Northern France.
She knows that the Germans’ ability to thwart the Allied
attack depends upon their lines of communication, and in
the days before the invasion no target is of greater strategic
importance than the largest telephone exchange in Europe.
German intelligence knows
that paratroop officer
Steiner survived "Operation
Eagle," the bungled
assassination attempt on
Winston Churchill, and is
now a POW somewhere in
London. Reichsfuhrer
Himmler wants him back --
at any cost -- and puts his
top espionage agents in
charge of the perilous
rescue mission. Racing from
the nightclubs of Lisbon to
Hitler's opulent country
retreat to the damp streets
of London, Himmler's men
get closer to their target --
and to the shattering true
objective of their mission....
In the Pas de Calais, Nathalie Mercier, a young
British Special Operations Executive secret agent
working with the French Resistance, disappears.
In London, her husband Owen Quinn, an officer
with Royal Navy Intelligence, discovers the truth
about her role in the Allies' sophisticated
deception at the heart of D-Day. Appalled but
determined, Quinn sets off on a perilous hunt
through France in search of his wife. Based on
real events of the Second World War The Best of
Our Spies is a thrilling tale of international
intrigue, love, deception and espionage.
In the novel, the Allied prisoners
learn to loathe Ryan, the spit-andpolish
senior American officer,
and they insultingly add the
Germanic von to his name. The
POWs are put onto a train
heading deeper into the Reich but
Ryan’s plan is to take the train
across the Swiss border.
Hundreds of POWs on a speeding
train, the Wehrmacht right behind
them. What could go wrong?
LITERARY DIGEST / May 2020
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