Tom Wilde, an American history professor is infiltrated to Germany shortly before the U.S. enters WW2. His mission is to retrieve a "package" which turns out to be a young child. Martin Bormann wants this child dead so picking her up and exfiltrating her is fraught with hazard. Even when he returns to England the danger continues to be caught between risk from Bormann's agents and his own side. Historically plausible, its a fast and readable thriller.

A new Rory Clements book, I couldn't contain my excitement!! At first look I did wonder if this was going to be for me as I'm not overly keen on wartime books but how wrong was I? I was gripped by the end of the first page.

This wartime thriller is set in 1941 and our hero Professor Wilde goes into Nazi Germany to smuggle out a mysterious "package". Although this is the follow on to another book about Professor Wilde it isn't essential to have read it, this would be a good stand alone as you get so wrapped up with all the twists and turns you really don't need any background information on our hero's previous life, although there is plenty given as you would expect with a book of this quality.

I don't need to say how much I enjoyed it do I? Fabulous story, I read it in 2 sittings...I rarely read in the wee small hours but this just flowed so well I simply couldn't put it down.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advance copy in return for an unbiased review.

This is the 4th book in The series written by. Rory Clements series about WW2. The story involves a package that Wilde is sent to pick up and a chase through Germany to escape to the coast.
I really enjoyed reading this latest books

A lively past paced thriller, very gripping containing lots of well researched facts.
Well did Hitler have a child? Book is based on this idea, full of information on Hitler's elite and the rivalry between them. Story stars with a murder and continues in that vein, with torture and more murders, lots of double dealing and secrets.
Impossible to relay the plot twists as there are so many, also a large number of well described character.. Enjoyable, engrossing read.

Having read the first Tom Wilde book, Corpus, but not the following two, I was slightly concerned that I’d feel I was missing something in reading Hitler’s Secret next (but who am I to turn down the opportunity to read a book like this ahead of publication?!). I needn’t have worried. Clearly, a lot has happened to Wilde and the other recurring characters in the intervening stories, but they’re touched upon lightly and didn’t detract from my enjoyment of this one.
I like a good counterfactual/alternative history tale (Robert Harris’s Fatherland is one of my all-time favourites) and by the end of the first page I was sucked into the story to find out just exactly what Hitler’s gatekeeper Bormann was hiding. An undercover mission in 1941 Germany can’t help but feel tense and claustrophobic, and Rory Clements does it well. Boy, does he know how to ratchet up the tension. Just when one of the good guys has escaped one bit of jeopardy, another rears its head. My interest in finding out what happened next means I have had a couple of very late nights! I think I’ll go back and read Nucleus and Nemesis now…

An American Professor at Cambridge University is recruited by MI 6 and sent to Nazi Germany in the guise of a businessman on a sales mission and secretly to collect a package and smuggle it back to England. This simple task however is not what it seems, and the package itself is a surprise too. High level vested interests are involved when the collection of the package stirs up a hornet’s nest. The story gives a good idea of a fractured Germany as rooted in the cultures of the former independent kingdoms that had been unified into the fatherland. Sitting uneasily under the Nazi Yoke and giving rise to assassination attempts for Hitler’s overthrow this also results in the agent getting help from unexpected quarters that enables the success of his mission. Back in the UK he then has to battle with conflicting political interests in the package that he overcomes with an unexpected happy ending. Altogether a most interesting, exciting and compelling read.

I did not realise that this book was number 3 of a series but to be honest, this book was not good enough to make me want to read the others. It was hard to stay focused on the story and the characters were not very engaging at all.

When I requested this on NetGalley I was fascinated by the idea of the story, and had no idea this was part of a series. I was concerned that it would make little sense on its own - and I’m sure some of these characters and their relationships would be clearer if you knew the previous books - but I worried needlessly.
In this book, Tom Wilde is called upon to carry out what can best be described as a foolish mission: to travel to Germany and remove a package of extreme importance. What nobody tells him is that the package is actually a ten year old girl thought to be the secret daughter of Adolf Hitler.
From the outset we are witness to some unpleasant events. This is a regime built on terror, and some of the behaviours shown are chilling. There’s still good guys, and though we’re not always sure of the boundaries we have to place our trust in them.
The book takes us through a number of terrifying scenarios. It’s enough to make anyone applaud the bravery of those who risk their life for such situations, even if we’re also shaking our heads in sorrow at the brutality and callousness shown by some inherently selfish characters.
The backdrop to the story seemed plausible, and the blending of fact and fiction creates an interesting atmosphere. I was pleased that we were offered another viable reality for Klara at the end of the book, but I’m guessing there’ll be more to come from Wilde.

Received this as an ARC from Netgalley.

I hadn’t realised this was in a series or I would have started at the beginning.

I’ve always liked ‘what if’ stories and always been fascinated by the way Hitler acquired such support back in the 1930s. I understand a little better as we see the growth of populism in the world today. Simple solutions for complex problems and target scapegoats. We see a well established Nazi Germany and the detail is very convincing. However I struggled with is as it seemed to meander.

This book just never worked for me. Boorman remained an inexplicable monster.

The other characters generally never came to life and the plot lacked real substance. It’s well written, but I think it could have done with some judicious editing to tighten it all up.

This is a spy thriller, set in late 1941 when Germany seemed to be winning WW2, even as Japan joined it. However, Rory Clements quietly creates a contrast between everyday life in Britain, where there is some hardship and quite a lot of danger, but if you’ve got your ration coupons you get your fair share of the necessities of life -even a Christmas lunch- and NAZI Germany, where the necessities of life are in short supply and those in privileged positions (invariably as a consequence of their standing with the NAZI Party and powerful factions within it) have considerably more than their fair share and those people who don’t know anyone in power are already suffering, even as Germany seems to be militarily triumphant. Clements does not labour the point, but he does provide the inquiring millennial reader with the information they need to understand how the apparently all-powerful NAZIs came to lose the war: they did not, at any stage, look after the people upon whose shoulders their wartime economy depended. The economy failed, as it had done for the Confederacy in the American Civil War, for essentially the same reasons: slave labour from the occupied countries was indeed employed, but even treatment of the native German non-slaves was only superficially better under the NAZIs.

(A warning here for Britain in 2020: if we continue to tolerate ever-increasing levels of modern slavery, we will not prosper and we will not deserve to. Look at the Confederacy and NAZI Germany for a moment!)

That is the background of the book, the foreground highlights the other defining vice of National Socialist Germany’s political elite, which was factionalism and endless plotting and scheming. Hitler actually accepted and even welcomed that his ministers would scheme against each other: he saw this as the politics of the wolf-pack, where the fittest wolves would rise to the top. This may work for wolves and hyenas but in human affairs it has a uniform tendency to select the worst humans possible for the leadership. What defines a successful human is NOT what defines a successful wolf, but even wolves have a caring side. The NAZIs (and some other more current national creeds with socialist characteristics ) had an ideological aversion to caring.

NAZI ministers in this tale range from Todt (intelligent and likeable, even impressive, but still in charge of the slave labour system), through Goring (vain and scheming) to Borman (utterly despicable.) It’s all about self-gratification and self-interest. In the forest of treachery and danger which they create, an innocent and vulnerable person has to survive.

This is a thriller in the sense that shocks and plot twists keep coming at the reader, and if the book has a major flaw, it is that this begins to feel a bit relentless at times.

One minor flaw is that a small German naval vessel is referred to, by German characters as an “E-boat” (a generic allied term for any form of combat-capable enemy launch or speedboat, including Italian ones.) For the record, what is being referred to is an “S-boote” and the Royal Navy used this term when those reporting a sighting could identify it as such, because one had to react to an S-boote somewhat differently from a larger but slower R-boote intended for roles such as escort or minelaying rather than attack.

A more significant error is that the hero, a sort of deniable field agent working for both MI6 and the nearest thing the Americans had to an equivalent in 1941, is not only told that key information comes from “BP” or Bletchley Park, but he already knows that this is involves codebreaking! No field agent was told about Bletchley Park in any way, and nobody who had somehow found out would have been sent into occupied territory, let alone sent there on a desperate mission with a significant risk of capture.

In general, though, this is a good novel.

Tom Wilde is a resourceful academic, enlisted on a secret mission to Nazi Germany. He meets many obstacles and, during the course of his mission, is faced with a moral dilemma. How will he proceed?

This is part spy novel, part chase thriller and proceeds at a reasonable pace. There is some tension but also some rather unlikely setpieces. Characters are rather thinly drawn and there is no real clue (there may be in the preceding books in the series, events from which are hinted at) why Wilde is so sought after by the security services as his qualities seem ill-suited to the mission. Wilde may be resourceful but there is much luck to assist him on his quest and the high politics which cause him such a moral dilemma seem too easily overcome.

(I received an advance copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review)

This is the first book in the Tom Wolfe series that I have read and having thoroughly enjoyed the author’s John Shakespeare novels, I came to it with high expectations. So it gives me no pleasure to say that I was rather disappointed with this book. The Second World War is of course fertile territory for thrillers and spy novels and perhaps I have been spoilt in that the last such book I read was Manda Scott’s magnificent “A Treachery of Spies”. Sadly, I don’t think Mr Clement’s novel is in the same class.

The book starts well and I thought that at least we were in for a good story. But for me, the plot soon felt contrived, was full of holes and inconsistencies and filled with stock characters. Moreover, for such an experienced and successful novelist, the writing felt wooden and the sparse characterisation failed too ignite any real feelings about the participants, whether good or bad.

Clearly a lot of other reviewers loved this book so perhaps I am missing something but for me, it just simply didn’t work.

Griping to begin with but it became a little soggy in the final 25% of the book. By then I was already invested enough to keep going to find out what happens.
Overall I'd give it a go.

I really enjoyed this book. It has a great storyline and it keeps you engaged throughout. The characters are a bit confusing and you are not sure who is who’s side But that’s the best part of the book. Set during the World War Two, it takes you on an alternative path that the war could have taken had things materialised differently. Quite interesting!

I LOVE a ‘what if’ book and a book that keeps me guessing to the very end, and this had both in spades. What I really liked was that, at the end, the ‘what if’ could still be true - it’s not inconsistent with the general course of history.
The characterisation was fab - and I really cared about what happened to even relatively minor characters. The storytelling was great too: so many heart-in-mouth and audible-gasp moments!

Also to be posted on insta: LilyMWrites

I understand that this is the third book in the series by Rory Clements. However, this can be considered to be a stand-alone book with no previous knowledge of the characters required, most of the gaps are filled in later.
The plot in this novel is based on a semi-amateur agent trying to smuggle an important 'package' out of Germany that could possibly alter the course of WW2. He is directly and indirectly supported by a wide cross-section of interesting characters.
Clearly Clements has undertaken some detailed research on some of the main well-known Nazi hierarchy. The fairly polite Allied dialogue neatly sets the tone against the Nazi ranting and savage in-fighting.
Unfortunately, it took me longer than usual to fully get absorbed in the novel due to the author's unique writing style. My perseverance paid off and I ended up enjoying the book.

A good read which kept me reading well into the night. It takes you right back to the reality of Hitlers reign - the descriptions of the time, the nazis, the hierarchy. The story centres around secret agents and spies rather than military and war time specifically. It shows the mix of friendships and relationships across nationalities which was a little unexpected, and shows not all Germans were bad but rather living life under a tyrant. . A recommended read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Kara is 10 years old and lives with her adoptive parents in Germany during WWII. Tom Wilde is a college professor and asked to take on a secret special mission to go to Germany and bring back a special package. When he finds out he needs to rescue Klara, whose life is in mortal danger, his mission becomes a deadly adventure. Who are Klara’s birth parents and who wants her dead together with anyone who knows she exists?
A fast paced read with well written characters. Adventure, intrigue, danger, death, love and hope. This book has it all from beginning to end. Enjoy every page.

I liked this book. It is one of a number of books following the WW2 exploits of Tom Wilde, the American academic from Cambridge University. He is smuggled into Germany to retrieve a "package" that will help the Allies' war effort but is soon in trouble and danger.

As I read the book I was intrigued by the actual provenance of the "package" and how much truth there was in its existence (I'm not much of an expert on WW2, to be honest) - i.e. how much is fact and how much conspiracy theory. As such there is blurring of the lines between history and historical fiction. Likewise I had never heard of Martin Bormann so it was interesting to understand more about him as a historical figure.

Great story line with well described characters.
This is I believe the 3rd in a series but the first I have read. I was not aware that there were previous books but his was easily read as a standalone novel.
Lots of actual locations described.