Monday, September 24, 2018

Anthony Quinn: Our friends in Berlin, 9781787330986, trade paperback, Jonathan Cape (Penguin Random House UK) July 2018



Anthony Quinn’s very atmospheric spy thriller opens in war torn London in 1941, giving it a graphic description of what it must have been like to live in London during the Blitz. According to the publisher, the book was inspired by real life events. It was a well kept secret after the war that England had quite a number of Nazi sympathizers, some quite famous.  

This book makes excellent holiday, escapist reading with a very believable ending and a sophisticated writing style. 

Amy Strallen works in a marriage bureau when she is approached by Jack Hoste. While she believes he is trying to find a suitable marriage candidate thru her bureau despite his odd behavior, his motives are absolutely different. Amy is the only connection to  Marita, a Nazi sympathizer who has gone into hiding and is crucial to Jack’s work.  He has been recruited by MI5 to infiltrate a group of British Nazi supporters who are feeding dangerous information to Berlin. 

When his contact to Amy succeeds leading him to headstrong Marita, a tight plot full of deception and unexpected events kept me turning the pages rather quickly particularly in the second half of the book.

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