Operation Tulip is the third and final instalment of the Secret Agent series. It continues with the resistance fighters in Holland as its split in two when the allies fail to take all of Holland with operation Market Garden.
The novel detailed the struggles the resistance fighters and civilians had, as things fell apart with little hope as everyone in occupied Holland is slowly starved.
Desperation is throughout the pages and heartbreaking as children are dying of starvation. A gripping conclusion to a story of sacrifice, love, courage and bravery. 4 stars
I would like to thank the author, HQ and NetGalley for my copy of this novel, in exchange for my honest review.
#OperationTulip #NetGalley

I hadn't realised this was the third in a series of books about WW2 and only tuned in to that fact just now as I came to write a review. It reads completely as a stand alone novel and any references to previous events are explained briefly and clearly.
This is a story of the bravery and resilience of secret agents working in occupied Holland during WW2. Nancy is on a dangerous mission. Half Dutch, she speaks the language well enough to pass as native and is used by the resistance to get close to the SS officers holding valued members of their team. Meanwhile her boyfriend, Tom, is anxious about her and decides to make a daring trip into the Netherlands in an effort to rescue Nancy. Little does he know she does not need rescuing and is a very capable agent.
The book is a realistic account of life during the occupation detailing the brutality and hardships endured by the Dutch, the Jewish population and the agents trying to help them. Historical details bring the book to life and the author does not veer away from the living on the edge reality, giving us a twisting and turning gripping read.
With thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins UK for an arc copy in return for an honest review.

I didn’t realise this was a series so read this as a standalone! I managed ok however sure I would have been more invested if I’d read the first 2 books which I will do now. (My fault entirely!)

I love a book that kicks off from the front page at this did exactly that, I’m a fan of WW2 stories and have read many fact based fiction books based on the resistance and this one is definitely up there!

Operation Tulip, the third instalment in Deborah Swift’s WWII Secret Agents trilogy, sees the return of its leading characters, Nancy Callaghan and Tom Lockwood. I was delighted to see them back in action and for their personal story to continue.

In this book we are transported to Nazi-occupied Holland. We follow Nancy on a dangerous mission. She is tasked with infiltrating the Dutch collaborators and engage with one of the nastiest SS officers in order to gather intelligence about a captured leader of Dutch Resistance. In the time of war, uncontrollable forces are at work and little tends to go to plan – Nancy’s assignment is fraught with complications. She has to think quick on her feet and maintain her composure to avoid detection. Back in England, Tom is plagued with anxieties. He won’t surrender to them and comes up with a plan, codenamed Operation Tulip, to bring Nancy to safety.

The story is based on true events. Swift doesn’t shy away from showing us the brutality of Nazi occupation, the hardship endured by the Dutch, the life of uncertainty and fear and the constant threat of capture, torture and death. The historical research behind the story is evident. But in Swift’s hands, history is enlivened by the gripping plot, white-knuckle suspense and living-breathing characters we have come to know and root for. What a finale to a fascinating series!

Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for an early review copy.

I enjoyed reading this book.

The story was very well written and researched, it made you feel as you were there in the Netherlands in between those that had to make difficult decisions.

Nancy has to complete a very dangerous task, which is to make friends with a senior SS officer, if needs be to take things further to ensure that the assignment is completed.

It was well written, you were engrossed in what was happening with Nancy and her life.

I highly recommend this book.

A fitting conclusion to this trilogy from WW2 when the heroine goes undercover in Holland. Full of suspense and intrigue with an accurate historical background

Thank you for the chance to read this ARC in return for my honest opinion

I had read the previous books in the series and looked forward to the series being brought to a conclusion

But this book disappointed me - it felt very slow and laboured. I also felt that I had read similar books that were better written.
The getting together of Tom and Nancy stretched credibility in my view, Did he go AWOL or did he actually seek permission? I know he trained people in coding but really?

The life in Holland at the end of the war seemed very hard, no food, behaving to the will of the Nazis, risking execution at every step and not knowing who to trust must have been horrendous. This book seemed to be more bothered with the exploits of Nancy and her various guises. I am sure that the narrow escapes she made were greatly exaggerated.

The ending was underwhelming for me and very rushed considering this was a conclusion to a series.

It is a long time since I read a book with such a chilling sense of inevitability, as the pebble thrown into the pond right at the start creates ripples endangering the lives of everyone.

Operation Tulip by Deborah Swift is a gripping historical fiction novel and follows undercover British agent Nancy Callaghan as she navigates the treacherous waters of Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II.

Deborah Swift weaves a tale of love, espionage, and the resilience of the human spirit's. Nancy's mission, code-named Operation Tulip, is to infiltrate the Dutch SS and gather vital intelligence. Her courage and determination are unwavering, even as she faces the constant threat of discovery and betrayal.

I was struck by the paradox at the core of this book, that to defend moral standards, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice them.

Deborah Swift avoids the danger of the SS commanders being stereotypes by occasional glimpses of their humanity, but ultimately their crimes are too great for any sympathy.

The novel offers an unexpected glimpse into the the chaos and division between the competing factions of the Dutch resistance, and the vivid descriptions of the war-torn landscape and the hardships endured by the Dutch people are poignant and often harrowing.

One of the strengths of Operation Tulip is the development of its characters. Nancy is a compelling protagonist, her strength and vulnerability making her relatable and endearing. The supporting cast, including her lover, Tom, and her resistance contacts, are well-drawn, adding depth and complexity to the narrative.

While Operation Tulip is a thrilling read, it also serves as a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought against tyranny. It is a testament to the human spirit's ability to endure hardship and hope for a better future. Highly recommended.

Tony Riches

Operation Tulip is a thrilling World War Two historical fiction transporting me back to Holland towards the end of the war. A portion of the Holland including Amsterdam and The Hague was still under Nazi occupation. The SOE still had agents behind enemy lines. One of those was Nancy.

Nancy had been many different people in the past, but the most dangerous of all is as Danique Koopman. Her newest mission has her surrounded by members of the SS and Gestapo. The danger was intense. One slip and she would be exposed. She had to remain. She needed to discover away to get Josef out of custody. As the head of a resistance group he knew too much.

Nancy's boyfriend, Tom, is getting restless. His fear for her safety has him doing the unthinkable. He travels from England to the free area of Holland inorder to get the occupied region. As Nancy works to free Josef in The Hague, Tom searches for her, working with resistance groups along the way. He risks everything for love.

The author was brilliant in the way she shared glimpses of World War Two through the eyes of Tom and Nancy. I got to experience a Holland that I would never know otherwise. The detailed horrors, atrocities and struggles brought me to tears and had my stomach clenching. I learned just how brave the citizens were and the immense sacrifices they made. How dare the Nazis eat lamb as the citizens ate boiled beets if they were lucky.

From the beginning to until the end the book was filled with action and intense drama. I found my self enjoying all of the suspense. I never knew if a mission would fail. I never knew if a mission would succeed. I never knew who would be arrested. I never knew if a resistance member would find themselves wounded or even worse, dead. I do love being entertained while learning.

This was a suspenseful novel. It brought to life the. Conditions in Netherlands at the end of ww2 where the. General population was near to starvation. It also observes the fractious nature of resistance groups as it follows the progress of a British agent trying to infiltrate nazi high command to secure the release of arrested resistance fighters. It builds tension well and weaves in a love story before its climax. A decent read

In Deborah Swift’s latest World War II historical fiction novel, she continues her WW2 Secret Agent Series by following Nancy on an undercover job deep in the occupied Netherlands in 1944. Away from her fiance Tom Lockwood, a coding expert based at Baker Street in London, Nancy must disguise herself as a wealthy Nazi widow to infiltrate SS headquarters in Amsterdam to protect her fellow underground fighters and trick high-ranking officer Detlef Keller while Tom devises Operation Tulip to bring Nancy home, taking on the risks of entering occupied territory himself. With such high stakes and two very different perspectives, Swift brings the dangers of occupied Holland and the resistance’s efforts to free the country to life in this fantastic historical fiction novel. Nancy and Tom are fascinatingly complex and capable characters, while their relationship continues to grow and evolve as the series continues. By not shying away from the troubles and challenges of the war and the occupation, Swift brings historical detail from her research into this novel for the context and atmosphere of the novel. A fantastic work of historical fiction with Swift’s usual amount of detail, the recurring characters of Nancy and Tom, as well as this new narrative, are engaging and draw the reader into the latest installment in the series.

Infiltrating the Gestapo and fighting famine.

This historical adventure is set in that part of Northern Holland which remained in German hands after the failure of Operation Market Garden to secure a crossing across the Rhine. The circumstances lead intelligence chiefs in London to base their assessment of future Dutch needs on what is happening in the liberated parts of Holland (there’s all sorts of political battles between different Dutch factions who are supplying lots of information about their own position, which seems to be none of London’s business by this stage) whilst the success of the Gestapo and other NAZI security forces in crushing resistance cells is denying London even the most basic information on the state of things in occupied territory. And things in the occupied territory are almost unimaginably bad and getting steadily worse as the NAZIs punish the Dutch population still under their control for the liberation of the rest of the country.

Agent Ludo, who has been through so many sets of false papers that she’s almost forgotten who she really is, has to flee from a failed operation and is immediately tasked with befriending a senior German officer in the hope of gaining the information needed to rescue a senior resistance figure from custody and probable execution, not so much to continue the fight as to use his respected position with former resistance groups in the liberated territories to get across, to those who might actually do something about it, the crucial fact that the entire civil population of the occupied area is on the brink of starvation in a freezing winter without any fuel.

Everything for Agent Ludo goes from bad to worse, as it does for her fiancé who has embarked on a fairly hare-brained rescue mission despite having no clear idea about where Ludo is or what she is doing. This mirrors the general state of things in Northern Holland and anywhere else the collapsing NAZI regime still holds power. In the end, Ludo and her associates gamble and sacrifice everything, including their own lives in some cases, on the faintest chance of getting food to the starving population.

Ludo loses almost every battle she fights, but her victory is that she keeps coming back for another try until the SS and Gestapo begin to scarper or fold into mental breakdown and the RAF starts to airdrop food, unopposed, but also too late for many. This novel is morally uplifting but emotionally unsparing. A male author would have shied away from this, but it needed to be written.

Another really gripping World War Two historical novel, set in occupied Holland. Lots of background information really brings to life how dire the situation was for local people, and what risks agents and resistance fighters took. Highly recommended.

This book had interesting detail about the situation in the Netherlands during the Second World War and the awful conditions the people were living under. And it was an enjoyable page turner.

However, having finished it about a week ago, I have very little memory of it. Unlike some books where the characters and plot stay with you, this did not.

A book to read on the train or on holiday.

A fine WW2 read about a female British agent in occupied Holland. The protagonists, Nancy and Tom, working on either side of the Channel, play their part in the Resistance. I was intrigued by this historical fiction as previously knew very little about the state of Holland during WW2. The suffering, deprivation and reprisals of the Dutch people was horrendous and the author’s writing brought this to life. A bit of history, a WW2 timeline, suspense, a European setting, and a little bit of romance - just my cup of tea!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

A fitting end to a wonderful series.

"Operation Tulip", the third in Deborah Swift's WW2 spy series, opens in Amsterdam in 1944, where SOE operative Nancy Callaghan (now a field agent) is making her way to a rendezvous with a group of resistance fighters. Their plan is to kidnap a senior SS officer but things go wrong and the man is shot dead and Nancy is forced to flee. Meanwhile, her sometime accomplice, Tom, is frustrated at the Allies' lack of progress in defeating the Nazi occupation of Holland. And when he hears of Nancy's predicament, he immediately starts to devise a plan to extract her.

What follows is another tense and fast-moving story in which the two agents work to defeat the Nazis. In the Netherlands, Nancy goes undercover, posing as a wealthy Nazi in order to prise information out of a notorious SS officer, Detlef Keller, while in England, Tom finalises his plan and sets out to rescue her.

Much of the first half of the book takes place from Nancy's perspective, as she works to uncover vital information, while trying to stay clear of prying SS eyes. The prose is tight, full of period detail, and works hard to emphasise the constant pressure undercover agents worked under. We learn about food shortages, and how it makes desperate people resort to desperate measures. We also learn about the risks taken by brave souls in the resistance trying to free their country. The book has a full cast of characters to love, hate, fear and cheer, most well-enough formed to make us care about their fates.

It's nice the way the two main characters from the previous book, "The Silk Code" have continued their adventure. Although allegedly based on fact, and there is a lot of background on the Dutch Resistance, and the falling morale of Nazi officers, it doesn't get in the way of a good story. Although reading the previous book will help readers with some background, "Operation Tulip" can be read standalone, and fans will be pleased that our heroes do get closure.

Fans of the previous books will love this book. Definitely recommended for fans of Alex Gerlis and Embassie Susberry.

Another great story by the author. It follows in from her previous book so there was a good continuity of characters. I imagine there was quite a lot of poetic licence with elements of the story as the characters were very lucky at times! A great read.

Deborah Swift has done it again - immersive writing, compelling plot and captivating characters! I couldn't put this book down and read it in a day, it was that addictive.

This is the third in the series and just as fast paced and enjoyable. I've enjoyed reading each book in this series and really liked going to back to Nancy and Tom's story arc and seeing how their characters develop towards the end of the war and how tired and downtrodden they become, yet are still fuelled with a fire for victory. This book explores life in a domestic setting inside German occupied Holland with the lack of food and rations and the growing members of the resistance. Many, who risks their lives everyday in small acts of rebellion. Swift sensitively honours those who put their life on the line for the resistance and allies. In particular, Swift explores female agents and what they needed to do to gain insider knowledge. The plot also presents the breakdown of German morale and showing many men doing what it means to survive, rather than an unwavering allegiance to Hitler's plans.

The novel has many unlikeable and nasty villains that are very ruthless, and will stop at nothing to achieve what they want, this is especially presented through Schneider. These characters help the reader root for Nancy and Tom's success. Swift explores the power struggles within these occupied territories. The inclusion of many resistance members posing as German allies is also well-written that presents the sacrifices many made to infiltrate the ranks and the dangers involved. Swift articulates the way war changes people, not just in appearance but psychologically and these scars are presented through Tom and Nancy, who in book one (The Silk Code) are full of hope, but by the end of the war need time to adjust to a new way of life once the war is over.

Overall, a fast paced and dangerous historical fiction of hope, sacrifice and danger that captures the time period and the emotions in an addictive read. This series is well worth the read!

It's 1944 and Tom's girlfriend, Nancy, is a spy in the Netherlands. Tom wants her to come home to London. Unfortunately the government's efforts to extract her seem to be minimal so Tom decides to rescue Nancy himself.

So begins "Operation Tulip" by Deborah Swift. Nancy is so much braver than I could ever be. She works as part of the Dutch resistance movement, trying to keep other members safe. Then comes the big assignment (the one that sends chills down my spine): Nancy is supposed to become the girlfriend of the Nazi officer who oversees the prison.

The characters in "Operation Tulip" are appealing and well-developed. The story shows humanity at its best and at its worst. I enjoyed it very much, just as I have the other books by Deborah Swift, especially "The Shadow Network" and "The Silk Code".

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read "Operation Tulip." This is my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and HQ for the ARC

I almost can't belive this is based on a true story? It's a strong and emotional historical fiction. The story is gripping and the love story is sweet but heartbreaking. The book will have you ripping your hair and biting your nails because you just need to know what will happen next. I got so invested in the characters and their stories I was left short-breathed. I really enjoyed the novel and read it quickly. A major plus for such a strong and brave fmc. An inspirational woman!