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Summary
Summary
Rudolf Hess was the most closely guarded prisoner in the world. Forty-five years after his capture in Scotland on a supposed peace mission he was still in Spandau Prison. Why was it necessary to keep him there so long? He was a Nazi -- but one with a damaging tale to tell.
If anyone can reach him it is Berlin correspondent Red Goodbody, known for his foolhardiness, but also for his daring and panache. The fear is that the stability of Western Europe may be undermined by what Hess can reveal; and so both the KGB and MI5 move into action to protect the extraordinary secret of Spandau.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Lovesey's gripping thriller, first published in 1986 under his Peter Lear alias, Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer of the Third Reich, parachutes into Scotland on a one-man peace mission on May 10, 1941. Flash forward to 1984, a few months after Hess turns 90 in West Berlin's Spandau Prison, where he's been serving a life sentence for war crimes since 1947. A team of British journalists are looking into the truth behind his defection; their editor believes that their own government may have hidden reasons for insisting on Hess's continued incarceration. The reporters, including deputy sports editor Dick Garrick, get wind of a scandal that would totally revise public perceptions of Great Britain's posture during WWII-that British officials conducted secret peace initiatives with the Nazis early in the war. Garrick and the others pursue this theory at their peril. Lovesey (Another One Goes Tonight and 15 other Peter Diamond mysteries) does a good job suspending disbelief while he keeps the pages turning. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Lovesey, honored this year with the British Crime Writers Associations Diamond Dagger award for lifetime excellence, sets three reporters loose to discover why Hitler confidante Rudolf Hess, the Nazi who secretly reoutfitted a Messerschmitt and flew it from Germany to Scotland to establish peace negotiations during WW11, was the sole occupant of Spandau prison never to be released. What Jane Calvert-Mead, Dick Garrick, and Red Goodbody turn up is evidence that Churchill, despite frequent, stirring pronouncements about never bowing to the Nazis, was actually meeting with them on British soil to forge an alliance that would decimate the Russians. At the same time, the Nazis were negotiating with the Russians to carve up Europe between them, while Roosevelt calmly waited to see which pact would take before committing the Americans to a course of action. Meanwhile, de Gaulle, at odds with Pétain, was blackmailing Churchill for more support. To keep Hess who was privy to all this from revealing it, his continued imprisonment, at least according to MI5 and the KGB, was mandatory. The news trio, however, forge ahead with their inquiries, leading to Garricks murder, arson, more death, and the theft of Hesss memoirs, which he had somehow managed to smuggle out of Spandeau for publication after his death. Goodbody, with James Bond agility and Janes help, gains entry to Spandeau, interviews Hess, and escapes from the clutches of MI5, SIS, and the KGB to obtain the last copy of the Hess manuscript, and tell all. Riveting look at Englands wartime Conservative party members, Churchills slim power base, Nuremberg sentencing, and the four-country guardianship of Spandeau. A bit too much Goodbody derring-do, however, but Lovesey adds nice classic-puzzle elements.
Booklist Review
In May 1941, Hitler's Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, parachuted from his Messerschmidt and fell to earth near Glasgow, Scotland. Hess claimed he had come to negotiate peace between England and Germany. That much is true; what happens next in this well-researched novel (originally published in England in 1986 but appearing in the U.S. for the first time) is very plausible fiction. The bulk of the story is set in the mid-1980s when Hess, now an elderly man, is the only surviving prisoner in Spandau Prison. Only Hess knows the real reason for his flight to Glasgow in 1941, and he's kept the facts to himself. But now a manuscript, supposedly written by Hess in the 1960s, has come to light, and a publisher is threatening to rush it into print. Meanwhile, a maverick newspaper reporter, Red Goodbody, is hot on a story that may prove Hess was not looking for peace at all, that he was working with a group of British citizens to sell out their own country. A thought-provoking, entirely believable novel. --David Pitt