MOTHER DAUGHTER TRAITOR SPY by Susan Elia MacNeal is an amazing historical fiction standalone based on true characters and events featuring a mother and daughter duo in pre-WWII California. This is the first book by this author I have read and I could not put it down.
Veronica Grace has just graduated from college and finds herself black balled from her hoped for career in journalism in NYC. Her mother, Violet “VI” is the widow of a Navy commander and with the encouragement of Violet’s brother, they set out for a new start for both in Los Angeles, California. With no experience, Veronica is offered a job typing and discovers she is working an anti-Semitic propogandist couple.
Horrified, Veronica and Vi try to alert the authorities, but no one seems to care. The police and FBI have turned them away, so Vi calls an old friend of her late husband still in the Navy. He connects them with Ari Lewis who is an anti-Nazi spymaster. With both Vi and Veronica being of German descent and blonde haired blue eyed, they go undercover and are accepted into the heart of the Nazi conspiracy community in Los Angeles, but the deeper they go and the more they uncover, any suspicion could cost them their lives.
This book grabbed me right from the start and even though it is historical fiction it is based on a real mother daughter duo and many of the key characters are also true to historical events with just name changes. The plot is fast-paced and full of suspense. Veronica and Vi started out with just snippets of information gleaned from their new acquaintances, but the more they are trusted and pulled into the intrigue the danger increases exponentially. The author’s descriptions made me feel like I was in Los Angeles pre-WWII, and she was able to demonstrate the contrast between the sunny light feel of the city vs. the dark and dangerous underbelly of the Nazi conspiracy. This story also seems to parallel so much occurring in our news and politics today and I can only hope more people are like Veronica and Vi.
I highly recommend this historical fiction story and I will be checking out more of this author’s previous books.
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About the Author
MOTHER DAUGHTER TRAITOR SPY, a stand alone novel, is coming out from Penguin Random House on September 20, 2022. THE HOLLYWOOD SPY (Maggie Hope #10) was published in hardcover on July 6, 2021 will come out in paperback in August 2020. The Maggie Hope series will continue, with a new title coming out in 2023.
Susan Elia MacNeal is the author of The New York Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and USA Today-bestselling Maggie Hope mystery series, starting with the Edgar Award-nominated and Barry Award-winning MR. CHURCHILL’S SECRETARY, which is now in its 23rd printing.
Her books include: MR. CHURCHILL’S SECRETARY, PRINCESS ELIZABETH’S SPY, HIS MAJESTY’S HOPE, THE PRIME MINISTER’S SECRET AGENT, MRS. ROOSEVELT’S CONFIDANTE, THE QUEEN’S ACCOMPLICE, THE PARIS SPY, THE PRISONER IN THE CASTLE, THE KING’S JUSTICE, and THE HOLLYWOOD SPY. The Maggie Hope novels have been nominated for the Edgar, the Macavity, the ITW Thriller, the Barry, the Dilys, the Sue Federer Historical Fiction, and the Bruce Alexander Historical Fiction awards. The Maggie Hope series is sold world-wide in English, and has also been translated into Czech, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Turkish,Italian, Russian, Portuguese, and Bulgarian and is also available in large print and audio. The film and television rights to the series are currently with Warner Bros.
Susan graduated from Nardin Academy in Buffalo New York, and cum laude and with honors in English from Wellesley College. She cross-registered for courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and attended the Radcliffe Publishing Course at Harvard University. Her first job was as the assistant to novelist John Irving in Vermont. She then worked as an editorial assistant at Random House, assistant editor at Viking Penguin, and associate editor and staff writer at Dance Magazine in New York City. As a freelance writer, she wrote two non-fiction books and for the publications of New York City Ballet.
Susan is married and lives with her husband, Noel MacNeal, a television performer, writer and director, and their son in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE GIRL FROM GUERNICA by Karen Robards on this HTP Books Fall 2022 Historical Fiction Blog Tour. This historical fiction story is an emotional and suspenseful rollercoaster ride from beginning to end.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards returns with a riveting story of intrigue, deception and bravery in the face of war, inspired by Picasso’s great masterpiece Guernica:
On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them—by any means necessary.
As war begins to rage across Europe, Sibi joins the underground resistance, secretly exchanging information with Griff. But as the scope of Germany’s ambitions becomes clear, maintaining the facade of a Nazi sympathizer becomes ever more difficult. And as Sibi is drawn deeper into a web of secrets, she must find a way to outwit an enemy that threatens to decimate her family once and for all.
Masterfully rendered and vividly capturing one of the most notorious episodes in history, The Girl from Guernica is an unforgettable testament to the bonds of family and the courage of women in wartime.
THE GIRL FROM GUERNICA by Karen Robards is an emotional and suspenseful historical fiction with romantic elements story from beginning to end. This standalone novel follows a young female protagonist and her family from the first unprovoked aerial bombing of civilians at Guernica which shocked the world in 1937 through the end of WWII.
Sibil “Sibi” Helenger, her mother and three younger sisters are in the Basque city of Guernica. They were taking care of their grandmother in her last days while their father, a German rocket scientist remained in Germany. With the Spanish Revolution raging around them, Sibi wants to return to Germany, but her mother wants to stay. On a normal day in April, Guernica was suddenly attacked from the air with bombs dropping and machine gun aerial strafing from German planes.
Griff, an American military attaché pulls Sibi and her youngest sister from the wreckage. As Sibi attempts to get a hold of her father, she learns that her knowledge that the planes were German and not Spanish revolutionaries, puts her and her sister’s lives all in danger from the Nazi regime. Their father finds them and takes them back to Germany, but Sibi is still in danger, not only as she lies for the Nazi’s, but also because she continues to give Griff secret information to use against them.
As the war rages on, Sibi, known as “The Girl from Guernica” is committed to outwitting the Nazi’s who threaten her family while she does everything in her power to assist the allies in defeating them.
This is my favorite historical fiction book so far this year! It is riveting and I was unable to put it down. Ms. Robards does an amazing job of researching an often-forgotten war crime in the years leading up to WWII. Sibi’s resilience and strength while still being so young herself makes her an unforgettable character that I became invested with from page one. There are times when the story brought me to tears and others when I felt such happiness for Sibi, her family, and the mysterious Griff. All the characters and the historical references and locations are realistically written and believable.
I highly recommend this historical fiction read!
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Excerpt
April 25, 1937
To laugh and dance and live in the teeth of whatever tragedies an uncaring fate threw in your path was the Basque way.
The stories Sibi’s mother told, stories handed down through generations of indomitable women, painted those defiant sufferers as heroes.
Sibi feared she was not the stuff of which such heroes were made.
She was hungry. Her feet hurt. And she was afraid. Of those things, afraid was the worst by far. She was so tired of being afraid.
A knot in her stomach. A tightness in her throat. A prickle of unease sliding over her skin. Familiar sensations all, which did not make their sudden onset feel any less dreadful. Sixteen-year-old Sibi—Sibil Francesca Helinger—pushed back a wayward strand of coffee-brown hair that had escaped from the heavy bun coiled at her nape and frowned out into the misty darkness enshrouding the Calle Fernando el Católico.
Her pulse thrummed as she clung to the desperate hope that she was not seeing what she thought she was. Since the fighting had moved close enough so that the residents of this ancient village high in the western Pyrenees could actually hear gunfire in the surrounding hills, fear had become her all-too-frequent visitor. But this—this was different. This was because of something that was happening now, right before her eyes, in the wide, tree-lined street just beyond where she stood watching the regular weekly celebration on the night before market day.
Have we left it too late? The thought made her mouth go dry.
“I want a sweet.” Five-year-old Margrit’s restless movement beside her reclaimed her attention. Gripping the child’s hand tighter, Sibi cast an impatient glance down.
“There’s no money for a sweet.” Or anything else, Sibi could have added, but didn’t.
“But I want one.” Round blue eyes in a cherubic face surrounded by gold ringlets stared longingly at the squares of honey and almond turrón being hawked to the crowd by a woman bearing a tray of them. The yeasty aroma of the pastry made Sibi’s stomach growl. For the last few weeks, she and her mother had been rationing their diminishing resources by skipping the evening meal so that the younger ones could eat.
“Ask Mama to buy you one later.”
Margrit’s warm little fingers—which Sibi kept a secure hold on because, as angelic as the youngest of the four Helinger sisters looked, she wasn’t—twitched in hers. “She won’t. You know she won’t. She’ll say she doesn’t have any money, either.”
That was undoubtedly true. In fact, Sibi had only said it in hopes of placating her little sister until their mother returned. Thinking fast—Margrit had mostly outgrown tantrums, but not entirely—Sibi was just about to come out with an alternate suggestion when thirteen-year-old Luiza jumped in.
“You know we’re poor now, so stop being such a baby.” Cross because she hadn’t been permitted to go to the cinema with a group of her friends, Luiza spoke sharply. The thick, straight, butterscotch blond hair she’d chopped to chin length herself the night before—”Nobody has long hair anymore!” she’d wailed in the face of their mother’s horror—had already lost its grip on the rag curls she’d forced into it. She looked like she was wearing a thatch of broom straw on her head, but Sibi was far too good a sister, and far too preoccupied at the moment, to point that out.
“I don’t like being poor.” Margrit’s lower lip quivered.
“None of us do.”
“I specially don’t like—”
Luiza cut her off. “You’re whining. You know what Mama said about whining.”
“I am not…”
A match flared in the street. Tuning her sisters out, Sibi focused on what the brief incandescence revealed as it rose to light a cigarette—red tip glowing brightly—before arcing like a tiny shooting star to the ground. Sibi looked beyond the cigarette to the dark shape behind it. The dark shapes behind it. She wasn’t mistaken. Soldiers—their soldiers, the loyalist Republicans, their uniforms unmistakable—poured into the street from seemingly everywhere. And the numbers were increasing…
Her heartbeat quickened. Does no one else see?
Biting down on her lower lip, she glanced around. The crowd clapped and swayed to the rollicking music of the highly prized town band and ate and danced and played games and— She concluded that no one else did. The village leaders who were present appeared unaware: Father Esteban talked to the woman behind the refreshment table as she ladled out a bowl of spicy fish soup for him; His Honor the mayor played mus, the popular card game, with three friends; the Count of Arana, the town’s most prominent citizen, stood with his arms crossed and a stern gaze fixed on his fifteen-year-old daughter, Teresa, as she walked away from him with her hand tucked into the arm of… Emilio Aguire.
Sibi’s stomach gave an odd little flutter.
Watching them reminded her of just how much of an outsider she was here in this quaint small town with its red-roofed white houses and narrow cobbled streets. Emilio was her age, he was the handsomest boy in school and he had been kind to her. She had hoped… But no. To hope for anything where he was concerned was foolishness. She and her mother and sisters were only temporary residents. She worked as a part-time waitress and her mother had worked in a dress shop before being fired three weeks ago, when the shop owner’s husband had displayed too much interest in her. And that, of course, had immediately become a topic for much discussion among the town gossips whose gleeful suspicions that the former Marina Diaitz, now Helinger, who had come home with her children but without her husband, was a floozy were thus seemingly confirmed. All those factors combined to put them near the bottom of the social ladder in this place where the wealthy local aristocracy had been comfortably in place for generations, and they, with their German father, would have been outsiders, anyway. And Teresa was beautiful and rich and— Well, there it was, foolishness.
She had no time for foolishness.
Glancing at those in her own party—Luiza and Margrit, and their other sister Johanna, all bunched close around her, and their mother, Marina, dancing merrily with the baker Antonio Batzar beneath the colored lights strung above the makeshift dance floor in hopes of securing a scarce loaf of tomorrow morning’s fresh bread—Sibi felt her heartbeat quicken.
Intent on their own concerns, they appeared oblivious to anything else. As usual it was up to her, notorious as the family worrier, to think about what might happen, to catch and make sense of what the rest of them missed.
Tonight, it was that their soldiers, their last line of defense against the surging rebel Nationalists, appeared to be coming together en masse to slink like starving cats past the Sunday night festivities.
These were the same war-weary, battle-scarred troops that had been camped out in the forested peaks surrounding the town since they had fallen back after the savage attack on the neighboring village of Durango that had brought the nine-month-old civil war as close as its ancient churches and rambling streets. In the days since, thousands of panicking refugees had flooded the town. The warships of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, commander in chief of the rebel forces, had blockaded the Basque ports. Food had become scarce: along with bread, milk and meat were almost impossible to obtain. People were hungry, frightened. The war that had been safely on the other side of the country had changed direction so fast that the residents of these sleepy villages high above the Bay of Biscay had been caught unprepared. But unprepared or not, in a new and terrifying offensive the newspapers were calling the War of the North, the fighting was now rushing like a wave toward their front door.
The soldiers were all that stood between them and the enemy forces determined to destroy them. And the soldiers were leaving.
***
Author Bio
Karen Robards is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of fifty novels and one novella. She is the winner of six Silver Pen awards and numerous other awards.
THE WAR LIBRARIAN by Addison Armstrong is an emotionally captivating dual timeline historical fiction story featuring two women finding their voices and standing up for what they believe is right against injustice and inequality no matter the personal cost. So much in this historical story mirrors the ongoing moral struggle occurring in current society.
In 1918, Emmaline Balakin works in the Dead Letter Office. An only child, timid and bookish until she discovers a letter bearing a name from her past. It is the spark she needs to break out of her shell and embark on an adventure that takes her to a frontline hospital in France as a volunteer librarian. She reunites with a man from her past, befriends black servicemen and protests banned books as she discovers she is stronger than she believed until the military steps in.
In 1976, Kathleen Carre is eager to prove herself in the first coed class at the U.S. Naval Academy, but not everyone wants women at the Academy. The harassment only makes Kathleen more determined to succeed until the death of her grandmother who raised her almost breaks her. The solitary Kathleen soon finds herself being accused of crimes that could be the end of her dreams at the Academy unless she learns to trust others and uncover a secret from her grandmother’s past.
I loved this story and the strong, independent women characters. I found the history of the voluntary librarians overseas fascinating and the ongoing discussion of banning books relevant, to my dismay, to this day. The integration of women into the service academies occurred when I had just graduated from high school, and I always found those women to be brave leaders in the fight for equality. To read and realize that some of the problems encountered by the female midshipmen still occurs today, almost 50 years later is at times disheartening and at times maddening. This story opens the readers eyes to so many societal issues that are still considered issues and have never been resolved. This is an emotional rollercoaster with great characters that I could not put down.
I highly recommend this dual timeline historical fiction!
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About the Author
I’ve wanted to be an author since I was a five-year old writing stories about talking school supplies and ants getting their revenge on exterminators. While a junior at Vanderbilt University studying elementary education, I wrote my first historical fiction novel, The Light of Luna Park, and sold it to G.P. Putnam’s Sons in January of my senior year. Now that I’ve graduated with my Bachelor’s in Elementary Education and Language & Literacy Studies, as well as a Master’s in Reading Education with an ESL endorsement, I’m teaching third grade English language learners in Nashville and continuing to write.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE LAST OF THESEVEN by Steven Hartov on the HTP Books Summer Historical Fiction Blog Tour.
Below you will find an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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About the Book
A spellbinding novel of World War II based on the little-known history of the “X Troop” – a team of European Jews who escaped the Continent only to join the British Army and return home to exact their revenge on Hitler’s military.
A lone soldier wearing a German uniform stumbles into a British military camp in the North African desert with an incredible story to tell. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation meant to infiltrate a Nazi base, trading on the soldiers’ perfect fluency in German. For this man is not British born but instead a German Jew seeking revenge for the deaths of his family back home in Berlin.
As the Allies advance into Europe, the young lieutenant is brought to Sicily to recover, where he’s recruited by a British major to join to newly formed “X Troop,” a commando unit composed of German and Austrian Jews, training for a top-secret mission at a nearby camp in the Sicilian hills. They are all “lost boys,” driven not by patriotism but by vengeance. Drawing on meticulous research into this unique group of soldiers, The Seventh Commando is a lyrical, propulsive historical novel perfect for readers of Mark Sullivan, Robert Harris, and Alan Furst.
THE LAST OF THE SEVEN by Steven Hartov is an emotionally intense WWII historical fiction story featuring the fictional portrayal of a member of the historical “X Troop” who were a group of European Jews trained for covert operations by the British Army and sent behind enemy lines.
Lieutenant Bernard Froelich stumbles upon a British military camp wounded, dehydrated and barely alive after having escaped a Nazi camp in North Africa. He has traveled across the desert on an unbelievable journey. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation.
This is the story of Froelich’s odyssey of survival, loss, love, and vengeance as a Jew of German origin during WWII. The author paints beautiful and at times stark word pictures of every location of Froelich’s journey. I felt as though I was right along with him in every location and in every harrowing scene were he could have been killed. The author’s extensive research is evident throughout the story. I felt this story is important for readers to realize that there were Jewish commandos fighting the Nazis even as they faced antisemitism from some in the British army they served bravely.
I highly recommend this historical fiction based on an amazing troop of men during WWII.
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Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
North Africa, Spring 1943
In the Sahara, the sun could make a man bleed.
It was hard to believe at first, especially if you’d ever trekked a frigid winter landscape somewhere, boots slogging through alpine snow, limbs shivering and aching bone deep. It was a challenge to imagine it, such a murderous sun, when December memory recalled teeth chattering like a Morse code key, toes and fingers numbed and raw, eyebrows stiff with frost, till all at once that blessed star emerged from charcoal clouds to save the day.
The sun was a holy thing then. The breath of God on your frozen face.
Ah, but in the vastness of that empty desert, when spring fell prey to cruel summer, when the cloudless sky was nothing but a silver mirror, the sand an iron griddle, and there was not a tree or cave or cactus to throw a shadow’s sliver. Nowhere to run from the sun. It was then that heaven’s jewel became a hunting thing, its furnace eye unblinking, merciless, and pounding.
You could shade your skull with a cap, drape your blistered neck with burlap, but still you had to see your path as your squinting eyes filled with flies who’d found the only liquid in the land. The lancing light bounced off the dunes to slowly broil your face, lips turned plaster white and split, and the oils of your nose and cheeks fried patches there like poultry on a spit. And then, the crow’s-feet wrinkles at the corners of your bleary vision turned to brittle parchment, until at last they cracked, and the most unnatural happened…
The man across the dunes was weeping tears of brine and blood. But they were not of sorrow or self-pity, for all of his emotions had hollowed out so many weeks ago. They were simply the last vestiges of all the fluid he had left, squeezed from the ducts by that relentless sun.
He was small there in the distance, and nearly weightless now, though from the way he moved it seemed he wore a yoke of iron. He was no more than an upthrust child’s thumb against the umber sands, shimmering in the steaming light of the fata morgana, an illusion where horizon met the sky.
He wore a Bedouin burnoose, tight about his oily blond curls and rough against his bristled jaw. His German staff sergeant’s tunic was girded with white salt lines of evaporated sweat, a single bandolier of ammunition, and the lanyard of a camel skin water bladder, now shriveled like an ancient’s scrotum, nothing left. One Feldwebel rank was on his collar, his Afrika Korps palm-tree shoulder patch was bleached into a ghost, and in one pocket were two lizard tails he’d chewed from time to time, though all the meat was spent. The right waist of his tunic was punched through with a bullet hole, its fringes black with dried blood, and in the left thigh of his trousers was another one just like it, the reason for his crooked limp.
In his dangling right hand, below a ragged sleeve, he clutched a German MP40 Schmeisser machine pistol, barrel down, its leather strap dragging through the sand. His left hand held nothing, the nut-brown fingers capped with broken nails with which he’d tried and failed to dig some water from the heart of a dying oasis. His breaths rattled like an asthmatic’s, yet he came on, another half an hour, another mile.
A pair of British soldiers from Montgomery’s Eighth Army watched him. They knelt behind a berm of sandbags, Tommy helmets buckled tight, sleeves rolled up and neat, shorts revealing sun-browned thighs above knee socks and tanker’s boots. They were alone, the western guards of a garrison south of Medenine, Tunisia, and they raised their bayoneted Enfield rifles to bear down on the stranger, like twins who often read each other’s minds.
At twenty feet the German sergeant stopped, unmoving, only breathing. The Cockney Tommy on the left aimed the rifle at his chest.
“Drop the bloody Schmeisser.”
The German jolted, as if surprised to hear a voice aside from his own mutterings to himself, unsure if these two Brits were real or cruel mirage. Yet he obeyed, as after all he knew it didn’t matter. The machine pistol was choked with grit and only the first shell would have fired. He opened his fingers and let the gun slip, like the hand of a dying lover, and it fell to the sand and was still.
The Tommy on the right said, “Hände hoch.” Hands up. He was a Scot and it came out as “Handerr hook.”
The German tried, but he couldn’t raise his arms higher than his waist, and his leather palms fluttered there above the sand like a maestro urging his musicians to play the passage pianissimo. His cracked lips formed a trembling “O,” though no sound emerged, and he mouthed Water, and then again—a goldfish with its face pressed to the glass of an aquarium. The Scot, keeping his Enfield trained, pulled a tin canteen from his battle harness.
“Don’t go near him, Robbie,” warned the Tommy on the left.
The Scot pitched the water bottle, cricket-style, where it pinged against a rock before the German’s boots. But the man could hardly bend his wounded leg and leaned in half a fencer’s lunge, snatching the canteen two-handed. He unscrewed the cap and brought it, shaking, to his mouth, and raised his face to heaven as the water gushed into his swollen gullet and dribbled from his filthy beard. His body trembled, and he looked at the two men and said, in nearly perfect British English, “I am not a German.”
The Tommies glanced at one another, then back at their intruder.
“You don’t say, Klaus?” the Cockney said to him.
“Looks like a bleedin’ Jerry to me, Harry,” the Scot growled to his partner.
“He’s bleedin’ all right, mate,” said Harry sideways. “Got a couple of nicks.”
“Nicks?” Robbie snorted. “Coupla hefty caliber holes. Can hardly see `em for the flies.”
Cockney Harry craned his neck to peer beyond the German’s head.
“You all alone, mate?”
“Six others,” the German managed in a brittle whisper.
“Don’t see ’em.”
“All dead.”
“Right,” said Robbie. “And where’d ye come from then?”
The German dropped the canteen. His fingers wouldn’t hold it.
“Borj el-Khadra, by way of Tobruk.”
“Bollocks,” Harry spat. “That’s three hundred miles.” He thrust his buckled chin above the sea of endless dunes. “Across that.”
For a long moment, the trio regarded one another like drunkards sizing up opponents for a brawl. The Tommies watched the German’s hands, for they hadn’t searched him yet, while for his part he struggled to stay upright. Cockney Harry gestured at Robbie the Scot, but only with his head.
“Fire the Very pistol, Robbie. Green flare, not red. Let’s have the captain up here for a chat.”
Aside from Robbie’s flare, which arced into the silver sky and fell to earth somewhere, the trio stayed immobile until at last a throaty engine loomed. A four-wheeled open command car appeared from the north, its peeling fuselage bristling with petrol jerrycans, pickaxes, and Bren light machine guns snouted at the sky. It spewed a cloud of dust as it hove to and an officer dismounted, his captain’s cap stained with sweat, Webley pistol lanyarded to a holster. His left hand tapped a swagger stick against his muscled calf while his right fingers smoothed a short mustache. His large driver followed close, hefting a Thompson submachine gun.
The captain ambled up and stopped, his bloodshot eyes squinting at the strange tableau. Robbie the Scot turned and dipped his helmet brim, but Harry kept his rifle trained, and there were no salutes.
“What’s all this then, lads?” the captain said.
“Captured us an Afrika Korps infiltrator, sir,” said Harry.
“Sneaky desert serpent,” Robbie sneered.
“Good show then.” The captain nodded and scanned the prisoner head to foot. “Right. Summon a firing party.”
Harry turned and looked at his commander.
“Execution, sir?”
“Affirmative, Corporal.” The captain flicked his stick toward a distant rise. “And let’s stake his corpse on that hill. Perhaps it shall keep the other vultures at bay.”
“Yessir,” said the captain’s driver, and he turned back for the car to muster up a firing squad.
The captain wasn’t barbarous, but more than worn and weary, and his men were not quite sure if he was serious or bluffing. In the past few weeks, despite the routing of the Germans in the westward push for Tunisia, spies of every kind had probed his lines, including one Bedouin woman. They were often followed by marauding Stuka fighter-bombers. He’d lost four men, most painfully his major whom he’d buried and replaced, and had a fifth now dying in a tent, legless and weeping for his mother. So much, he thought, for Erwin Rommel’s “Krieg ohne Hass,” war without hate.
“I am not a German.” The intruder spoke again, and his voice spasmed with the effort.
The captain raised his chin. His driver stopped and turned. The prisoner’s accent was British, yet with a certain Berlin curl.
“That’s quite a claim,” the captain said, “given your costume.”
“He told us that shite too, sir,” said Robbie.
“Says he hoofed it from Borj el-Khadra,” Harry said. “By way of Tobruk, no less.”
The captain raised a palm to hush his men and squinted at the prisoner.
“What are you, then?”
The prisoner tried to swallow. The water hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough. His body quaked in feverish ripples now, his ragged clothing fluttering like gosling feathers. It was the proximity of rescue, now turned to sudden death, coupled with his famish, thirst, and wounds.
“SIG,” he said, tunneling in his delirium for the words. “Combined Operations.”
The captain raised an eyebrow. Harry asked him, “What’s ess-eye-gee, sir?”
“Special Interrogation Group.” The captain stroked his mustache corners. “Top secret commando unit, attached to LRDG and SAS. Mostly German Jews, but they were all killed at Tobruk, and that was many months ago.”
“Not I,” the prisoner croaked. His right hand reached into his tunic. The captain fumbled for his Webley and the Tommies’ Enfields stiffened, as the prisoner fetched a pair of British identification disks, one green, one amber, like autumn leaves on a threadbare lanyard, and they fell against his chest.
The captain glanced at them, and at the hollow bearded face again.
“Tobruk, you say. And where’ve you been since then…allegedly?”
“Captured. Escaped a month ago, or two, perhaps, I think.”
“You think.” The captain closed his fists and put them to his garrison belt. “And why, pray tell, if you were in this uniform, were you not executed as a spy? Those are Hitler’s orders, after all.”
“Because I had tea with Erwin Rommel,” the prisoner said, yet without a hint of irony that the German field marshal would have thusly intervened.
“Had a pint meself with Churchill just last week,” the captain’s driver quipped. The Tommies laughed, but the captain didn’t. There was something in the prisoner’s eyes—a sincerity of madness, or truth.
“What’s your name and rank?” he asked.
“Froelich, Bernard, second lieutenant.” He pronounced his given name as “Bern-udd” and his rank as “left-tenant.” Then he added, “Six seven two, four five seven.”
The captain produced a small pad and pencil from his tunic pocket—ink was useless in the desert. He wrote the details down, tore the page off and flicked it over his shoulder for the driver, his eyes never leaving the desperate gleaming blue ones there before him. They were bleeding from the ducts, but he’d seen that once or twice before.
“Sergeant Stafford,” he ordered, “take this to the wireless tent and have Binks get onto Cairo. Tell them we’ll need our answer double quick.”
The driver sped off amidst a cloud of dust, but his return was far from quick. A grueling fifteen minutes passed, while the prisoner teetered on his feet. He could no longer keep his head erect, and he fought to stay awake and straight. He told himself he’d stood this way before, for hours in formations, and he dredged up images of bucolic pleasures, the Danube and the Rhine, and even Galilee. He longed for rain and felt its kisses on his face, while rivulets of something else crawled down his beard and touched the corners of his mouth. But he tasted only brine, and then the armored car returned.
He raised his chin as the driver handed back the paper to the captain, who perused it, then spoke again.
“Lieutenant Froelich, if that’s you,” he said, “do you remember your last passwords?”
“I shall try,” the prisoner whispered as he stumbled through his memory, unsure if he could find the thing to save him from a bullet.
“If I said Rothmans cigarettes,” the captain posed, “what would you say?”
The prisoner’s sunburned brow creased deeply like a cutlass scar.
“I’d tell you I don’t like them, sir…that I fancy Players Navy Cut instead.”
The captain nodded, and offered his first thin smile of the week.
“That is correct.”
And Froelich slumped to his knees in the sand, a collapsed marionette, strings cut. And then he slipped from consciousness and toppled forward, knuckles in the desert, his palms turned up to the sun he hated.
“Fetch a stretcher, lads,” the captain said. “It’s him. He’s the last of them. He’s the seventh.”
Excerpted from My Last of the Seven @ 2022 by Steven Hartov, used with permission by Hanover Square Press.
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About the Author
Steven Hartov is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller In the Company of Heroes, as well as The Night Stalkers and Afghanistan on the Bounce. For six years he served as Editor-in-Chief of Special Operations Report. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, and most recently the History Channel’s Secret Armies. A former Merchant Marine sailor, Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper and special operator, he is currently a Task Force Commander in the New York Guard. He lives in New Jersey.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET by Sara Ackerman on this HTP Books Summer 2022 Historical Fiction Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
Dual-timeline historical fiction for fans of Chanel Cleeton and Beatriz Williams, THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET is a story of codebreaking, secrets, murder, romance and longing.
1943 HONOLULU
Cryptanalysist Isabel Cooper manuevers herself into a job at Station Hypo after the attack on Pearl Harbor, determined to make a difference in the war effort and defeat the Japanese Army by breaking their coded transmissions. When the only other female codebreaker at the station goes missing, Isabel suspects it has something to do with Operation Vengeance, which took out a major enemy target, but she can’t prove it. And with the pilot she thought she was falling for reassigned to a different front, Isabel walks away from it all.
1965 MAUNA KEA BEACH HOTEL
Rookie journalist Lucy Medeiras has her foot in the door for her dream job when she lands the assignment to cover the grand opening of Rockefeller’s new hotel–the most expensive ever built. The week of celebrations is attended by celebrities and politicians, but Lucy gets off on the wrong foot with a cranky experienced reporter from New York named Matteo Russi. When a high-profile guest goes missing, and the ensuing search uncovers a decades-old skeleton in the lava fields, the story gets interesting, and Lucy teams up with Matteo to look into it. Something in Matteo’s memory leads them on a hunt that involves a senatorial candidate, old codes from WWII, and Matteo’s old flame, a woman named Isabel.
THE CODEBREAKER’S SECRET by Sara Ackerman is an engaging historical fiction/mystery story told in the two intertwining timelines of 1943 and 1965 and both beautifully depicted on the lush Hawaiian Islands. This is a standalone story filled with intrigue, murder, and HEA love.
In 1943, Isabel “Izzy” Cooper has finally realized her dream to work as a codebreaker in Hawaii to avenge her brother’s death when Pearl Harbor was attacked. She meets her brother’s best-friend and pilot, Mateo Russi and as the two share their stories of her brother, they begin to get closer, but Russi has secrets of his own.
In 1965, Luana “Lu” Freitas lands her first big assignment covering the grand opening of Louis Roosevelt’s Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. Lu meets the famous Time magazine photographer, Mateo Russi who give her publishing advice as they become friends. When a famous singer goes missing and is believed dead, Lu and Russi begin to uncover secrets which have ties all the way back to Izzy and her codebreaking during WWII.
I enjoyed both timelines in this story and the mystery conclusion which tied them both together. Izzy and Lu are both strong, intelligent female lead characters. Russi is a man who has been shaped by loss and the war and I loved that he ultimately found peace and his HEA. All the characters were fully fleshed and believable. The plot starts a bit slow, but it does pick up and pulls you in so you cannot put the book down. The author does an amazing job of painting word pictures of Hawaii and the culture which makes for another layer to the story. The WWII history and the descriptions of the codebreaking failures and successes were interesting, also.
This is an intriguing historical fiction read with mystery and romance included.
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Excerpt
2
THE CODEBREAKER
Washington, DC, September 1942
There was perhaps no more tedious work in the world. Sitting at a desk all day staring at numbers or letters and looking for patterns. Taking notes and making charts. Thinking until your brain ached. For days and weeks and years on end. The extreme concentration drove some to the bottle, others to madness, and yet others to a quiet greatness that less than ten people in the world might ever know about. You might work for a year on cracking a particular code, only to have nothing to show for it but a tic in your eye and a boil on the back of your thigh. Failure was a given. Accept that and you’d won half the battle.
Isabel sat at her desk staring at a page full of rows and columns of five-letter groups that made no sense whatsoever on this side of the world. But on the other side, in Tokyo where the messages originated, she knew that Japanese officials were discussing war plans. War plans that were on this paper. As her eyes scanned the page, she felt the familiar scratching at the subconscious that meant she was close to seeing some kind of pattern. A prick of excitement traveled up her spine.
Suddenly, a hand waved up and down in front of her face, rudely pulling her out of her thoughts. “Isabel, you gotta put a lid on that noise. No one else can do their jobs,” said Lieutenant Rawlings, her new boss.
She forced a smile. “Sorry, sir, most of the time I’m not aware that I’m doing it. I’m—”
“That may be the case but try harder. I don’t want to lose you.”
Isabel had a tendency to hum during her moments of deepest focus, which had gotten her in trouble with her supervisors over the past year and a half while at Main Navy. In fact, she’d been transferred on more than one occasion due to the distracting nature of it. She’d worked hard to stop it, but when she went into that otherworldly state of mind, where everything slid away and the images moved around in her head of their own accord, the humming kicked back in. It would be like asking her not to breathe.
Lately, the whole team had reached a level of frustration that had turned the air in the room sour. Though they’d had success with the old Red machine, this complex supercipher seemed impossible to break. Faith was draining fast.
With her dress plastered to her back, and sucking on the second salt tablet of the day, Isabel put her head down, scribbling notes on her giant piece of paper. September in Washington burned hotter than a brick oven. Thoughts of her brother, Walt, kept interfering with her ability to stay on task. He would have turned twenty-five years old today. Would have been flying around somewhere in the Pacific about now, shooting down enemy planes, and hooting and hollering when he landed his plane full of bullet holes on the flattop. Walt loved nothing more than the thrill of the chase. Every time she thought of him, a lump formed in her throat and she had to fight back the tears. No one had ever, or ever would, love her more than Walt had.
More than anything, Isabel wanted to get to Hawai‘i and see the spot where his plane plunged into the ocean. To learn more about his final days and hear the story straight from the mouths of his buddies. As if that would somehow make her feel better. She rubbed her eyes. For now, she was stuck here in this hellhole of a building, either sweltering or shivering, depending on what time of year it was.
At 1130, her friend Nora waltzed in from a break, looking as though she’d swallowed the cat. Nora had a way of knowing things before everyone else, and Isabel was lucky enough to be stationed at the desk next to hers.
“Spill the beans, lady,” Isabel said quietly.
Nora glanced around the room, dramatically. “Later.”
Most of the team was still out to lunch, save for a couple of girls across the room, and Rawlings behind the glass in his office.
“No one’s even here, tell me now.”
Nora came over and sat on Isabel’s desk, legs crossed. She picked up a manila folder and began fanning herself, then leaned in. “I’ve heard from a very good source that the brass are tossing around names for the lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you look at it—crypto being sent to Pearl.”
Station Hypo at Pearl Harbor was one of the two main codebreaking units in the Pacific. Nora knew how badly Isabel wanted to be there.
Isabel perked up. “Whose names are being tossed?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“Should I remind Rawlings to remind Feinstein that I’m interested?”
“Absolutely not.”
“It couldn’t hurt, could it?” Isabel said.
“Sorry, love, but those men would just as soon send a polar bear to Hawai‘i as a woman,” Nora said.
“You seem to forget that one of the best codebreakers around is female. And the only reason most of our bosses know anything is because she taught them,” Isabel said, speaking softly. This was the kind of talk that could get you moved to the basement. And Isabel did not do well in basements.
“Neither of us is Agnes Driscoll, so just get it out of your head. And even Agnes is not in Hawai‘i,” Nora whispered.
“There has to be a way.”
“Maybe if you dug up a cache of Japanese codebooks. Or said yes to Captain Smythe,” Nora said with a wink.
Nora and Isabel were a study in opposites. Her short red bob had been curled under and sprayed into place, her lips painted fire-engine red. She had a new man on her arm every weekend and walked around in a cloud of French lilac perfume that permeated their entire floor.
“I have no interest in Captain Smythe,” Isabel said.
Hal Smythe was as dull as they came. At least as far as Isabel was concerned. Intelligent and handsome, but sorely lacking any charisma and the ability to make her laugh—one of her main prerequisites in a man. She had no time to waste on uninteresting men. Or men in general, for that matter. There were codes to be cracked and enemies to be defeated.
“Well, then, you’d better pull off something big,” Nora said.
3
THE CELLAR
Indiana, March 1925
Five-year-old Isabel Cooper had just discovered a fuzzy caterpillar in her backyard, and was bent over inspecting its black-and-yellow pattern when a wall of black blotted the sun from the sky. Always a perceptive child, she looked to the source of the darkness. Clouds had bunched and gathered on the far horizon, the color of gunmetal and cinder and ash. Wind swirled her hair in circles. Isabel ran inside as fast as her scrawny legs would carry her.
“Walter, come look! Something weird is happening to the sky,” she yelled, letting the screen door bang behind her.
Walter had just returned home from school, and was standing in the kitchen with two fistfuls of popcorn and more in his mouth. Mom had gone to the grocery store, and Pa worked late every day at the plant, so it was just the two of them home.
Walter wiped his hands on his worn overalls and followed his sister outside. From a young age, Isabel discovered that Walt, three years older, would do just about anything his younger sister asked. By all accounts he was not your average older brother. He never teased, included her on his ramblings in the woods and never shied to put an arm around her when she needed it. Outside, the wind had picked up considerably, bending the old red oak sideways.
Walt stumbled past her and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, gaping. “Jiminy Christmas!”
Daytime had become night.
“What?” Isabel asked.
“Some kind of bad storm a-brewing. Where’s Lady?” Walt asked, looking around.
Their dog, Lady, had been lounging under the tree when Isabel ran inside, but was now nowhere to be seen. “I don’t know.”
“We better get into the shelter. I don’t like the looks of this.”
“I need Lady.”
The air had been as still as a morning lake, but suddenly a distant boom shook the sky. Moisture collected on their skin, dampening Isabel’s shirt.
“Lady!” they cried.
But Lady didn’t appear.
Walt held up his arm. “See this? My hair is standing up darn near straight. We gotta get under.”
Isabel looked at her arms, which felt tingly and strange. Instead of following her brother to the storm cellar, she ran to the other side of the house.
“Lady!” she yelled again, with a kind of wild desperation that tore at the inside of her throat.
A moment later, Walt scooped her up and tucked her under his arm. “Sorry, but we can’t wait anymore. She’ll have to fend for herself.”
Isabel kicked and punched at the air as they moved toward the cellar. “Put me down!”
Walt ignored her and kept running. His skin was sticky, his breath ragged. They had only used the cellar a couple times for storms, but on occasion Isabel helped her mother change out food supplies. The place gave her the creeps.
“What about Mom? We have to wait for her,” she said.
“Mom will know where to find us.”
In the distance, an eerie whistle rose from the earth. Seconds later, the wind picked up again, this time blowing the tree in the other direction. From the clouds, an ink black thing stuck out below. Walt yanked open the door, threw Isabel inside and fumbled around in the dark for a moment before finding the light. Roots crawled through cracks in the brick walls. They went down the steep stairs, Isabel’s face wet with tears and snot.
“Come, sit with me,” Walt said, pulling her against him on the old bench Pa had built.
Warmth flowed out of him like honey, and she instantly felt better. But then she thought about Lady and her mother, who were out there somewhere. Her whole body started shaking. Soon, a rumble sent vibrations through the wall and into Isabel’s teeth. Too scared to cry, she dug her fingers into Walt’s arm and hung on for dear life. Suddenly, a frantic scratching came from above.
Isabel jumped up, but Walt stopped her. “You stay down here.”
Walt climbed to the top and opened the door. The wind took it and slammed it down hard. A loud barking ensued, and Walt fought with the door again, finally managing to get it open and bring Lady inside. The air possessed a ferocity Isabel had never seen before.
Lady immediately ran down the steps and started licking Isabel’s arms and legs, and spinning in circles at her feet. Isabel hugged the big dog with all her might, burying her face in Lady’s long golden fur. When Walt came back down, the three of them huddled together as a roar louder than a barreling freight train filled their ears. Soon, Lady began panting.
Walt squeezed Isabel’s hand. “It’s okay, we’re safe down here.”
He had to yell to be heard. And then the light went out. Darkness filled every crack and crevice. The earth groaned. The door above rattled so fiercely that she was sure it would fly off at any moment. All Isabel could think about was her mother out there somewhere in this tempest. Soon, her lungs were having a hard time taking air in.
“I can’t breathe,” she finally said.
“It’s just nerves. They act up in times like these.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I had it happen before.”
She took his word for it, because it was hard to talk above the noise of the storm, and because Walt always knew what he was talking about. Then, directly overhead, they heard a sky-splitting crack and a thundering boom. The cellar door sounded ready to cave. Isabel and Walt and Lady moved to the crawl space under the steps. The three of them barely fit, even with Lady in her lap. Lady kissed the tears from Isabel’s face.
Finally, the noise began to recede. When there was no longer any storm sounds, Walt went up the steps with Isabel close behind. He pushed but nothing happened. Pushed again. Still nothing.
“Something must have fallen on it,” he said.
“I have to pee.”
“You’re going to have to wait.”
“I can’t wait.”
Walt banged away on the door with no luck. “Then I guess you have to go in your pants. Sorry, sis.”
Isabel began to grow sure that this was where they would live out the rest of their short lives. That no one had survived the apocalypse outside and they would be left to rot with the earthworms, roots growing through their bodies until they’d been reduced to dirt. Her whole body trembled as Walt spoke consoling words and rubbed her back.
“They’ll find us soon, don’t you fret.”
Lady licked her hand, but Isabel was beyond words, shivering and gulping for air. Every now and then Walt went up to try to push the doors again, but each time, nothing happened. She vowed to herself that she would never, ever be trapped underground again. She’d take her chances with a twister over being entombed any day.
It was more than an hour before someone came to get them. An hour of dark thoughts and silence. In the distance they heard voices, and eventually a pounding on the cellar door. “Are you three in there? It’s Pa,” said a voice.
“Pa!” they both cried.
“We got a big tree down on the door up here. Hang tight, I’ll get you out soon.”
When the doors finally opened, a blinding light shone in. Pa reached his hand in and pulled them out, wrapping them in the biggest hug they’d ever had. Never mind that the old truck was upside down and one side of the house missing.
“Where’s your mother?” Pa said.
“She went to the store,” Walt said.
Pa’s face dropped clear to the ground. “Which store did she say she was goin’ to?”
“She didn’t say, but she left just as soon as I got home from school,” Walt said.
Only half listening, Isabel spun around in disbelief at the chaos of branches and splintered wood and car parts and things that didn’t belong in the yard. Sink. Baby carriage. Bookshelf. It appeared as though the edge of the tornado had gone right over their place, leaving half the house intact, and obliterating the rest.
“Son, stay here with your sister. And stay out of the house until I get back. It might be unstable,” Pa said, running off to his car.
“Mom will be okay, won’t she? The store is safe, isn’t it?” Isabel asked.
“Sure she will. Pa will be back with her soon,” Walt said.
They wandered around the yard, dazed. This far out on the country road, the nearest neighbor, old Mr. Owens, was a mile away. Drained, Isabel sat down and pulled Lady in for a hug. Pa didn’t return for a long time, and when he did, they could tell right away that something was wrong. His eyes were rimmed in red, like he had been crying. And Pa never cried.
“Kids, your mom isn’t coming back.”
That was the first time Isabel Cooper lost the most important person in her life.
Sara Ackerman is a USA TODAY bestselling author who writes books about love and life, and all of their messy and beautiful imperfections. She believes that the light is just as important as the dark, and that the world is in need of uplifting stories. Born and raised in Hawaii, she studied journalism and later earned graduate degrees in psychology and Chinese medicine. She blames Hawaii for her addiction to writing, and sees no end to its untapped stories
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE SHADOW OF THEMOLE by Bob Van Laerhoven on this Black Coffee Book Tour.
Below you will find an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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About the Book
1916, Bois de Bolante, France. The battles in the trenches are raging fiercer than ever. In a deserted mineshaft, French sappeurs discover an unconscious man, and nickname him The Mole.
Claiming he has lost his memory, The Mole is convinced that he’s dead, and that an Other has taken his place. The military brass considers him a deserter, but front physician and psychiatrist-in-training Michel Denis suspects that his patient’s odd behavior is stemming from shellshock, and tries to save him from the firing squad.
The mystery deepens when The Mole begins to write a story in écriture automatique that takes place in Vienna, with Dr. Josef Breuer, Freud’s teacher, in the leading role. Traumatized by the recent loss of an arm, Denis becomes obsessed with him, and is prepared to do everything he can to unravel the patient’s secret.
Set against the staggering backdrop of the First World War, The Shadow Of The Mole is a thrilling tableau of loss, frustration, anger, madness, secrets and budding love. The most urgent question in this extraordinary story is: when, how, and why reality shifts into delusion?
Trigger warnings: Realistic wartime violence and death
Goodreads Rating: 4.5 *
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My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
THE SHADOW OF THE MOLE by Bob Van Laerhoven is a dark and intriguing historical fiction/mystery set in France during WWI featuring a man found with amnesia and the young psychiatrist who wants to uncover his identity.
As the French tunnel beneath the German lines in the Argonne during WWI, a group of diggers discover an unconscious man in a connecting abandoned mining shaft. He is taken to the hospital at the front and when he wakes up, he claims he has no memory. The staff refer to him as “The Mole”.
Michel Denis is a young psychiatrist who volunteered to work at the front and in an explosion loses his arm. He continues to help as much as possible and he becomes intrigued with the man brought in from the tunnel called The Mole. He is determined to uncover his identity and discover how he ended up in the tunnel. The Mole asks for paper and pen and writes his story, but what is the truth?
This story is an intriguing look at the psychological impact of war on the psyche. Everyone in this story deal with the horrors of war but continue to have a grain of hope for the future. I feel this is more literary fiction with the continual psychiatric analysis of The Mole, his writing, and Michel’s thoughts on the self. That is not a negative criticism, just a heads up to readers who are looking for more of a genre style historical mystery. The settings are descriptive and the emotions palpable in both the story as told by Michel in present day and The Mole’s writing of his life. An interesting read.
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Excerpt
Part I
Prologue
’ ’, they murmured, with their heads bowed, a prayer to La Sainte Vierge1. Their voices were soft and solemn, like when they were chil‐ dren. In the shadows, their lanterns sparked the dust into a golden mist, as they hacked their way into the earth.
Jean Dumoulin used to hum softly but melodically during his work in the tunnels. His fellow diggers had nicknamed him ‘the canary’. Of late, he had taken to murmuring the bawdiest beer hall songs he knew, for the frankly insane reason that his regiment, the 13th French Infantry, had received the audacious orders to dig tunnels under the German tunnels at the spot that everybody in the Argonne-region called Fille Morte2.
That day, February 26, 1916, Jean Dumoulin had turned to inventing his own songs. Faced with the threat of German tunnels above him, he sang only in his mind. Dumoulin liked to surprise himself with whatever words came to him. The words made him feel different: not a twenty-six-year-old French soldier clawing away in near darkness, but more like a classic Greek poet, posing with a lyre on a mountain top overlooking a shimmering sea.
3
Dumoulin was crooning Ma bouche sera un enfer de douceur/tu crias ton armée de douleur3, while he used his pick-axe to clear the rubble around the entrance of an old mine gallery they had discovered. He pondered which verse would come next: ton amour armé or ton amour blindé?4
It was then he saw the body lying in the gallery. From time to time, when they were grubbing in the earth, a shovel would uncover a half-buried body. They couldn’t always tell if the stiff was German or French. Often, all that was left was a rotten lump of meat. In spite of the stench and their revulsion, the sappers would try to identify it. Who else would do so? They thought of all the missing men and their anxious relatives and loved ones and they searched the body for anything that could lead to its identification.
“Nom de Dieu,” Dumoulin hissed over his shoulder to his companion Guillaume. “Another stiff. Hope this one doesn’t break in half like the other one.” Neither had actually seen the mummified corpse of a miner, perished years ago in the coal mines, who was said to have cracked in half when tunnel diggers brought it to the surface, but the story was legendary and if you denied it, you were just a cynic.
Cursing under his breath, Jean moved forward. When his hands touched the body, he jerked away as though someone had stabbed him.
4
Chapter One
So softly treads the night.
Standing behind my right shoulder. No breath reaches my skin.
5
Chapter Two
‘ ‘, at the horizon. The Meurisson Valley, home to the field hospital which served the whole region, lay in Bois de Bolante, a low-lying part of the great Argonne woods. Dr Michel Denis walked there through the trenches. The recovery area was crudely constructed – a semi-underground complex harboring medical provisions, ammunition and food storage, bathhouses and a sickbay. Like everyone else who worked there, Denis was curious about the infamous ‘Mole’, and he wanted a closer look. The sappers digging tunnels under the German lines had found the unconscious man, dressed in civvies, in the tunnel of an old charcoal burner. A day later, the man was still unconscious.
In the sickbay, Denis went to the patient’s bed and studied his facial features. Wide ears, a somewhat beaked nose and jowly cheeks, perhaps Semitic. Denis guessed The Mole’s age at about forty-five. Baggy blue skin under the eyes. As he made these observations, Denis came closer and now he stood at the bedside. Startled, he glanced at where his own right arm, severed by a piece of shrapnel, should have been. Involuntarily, he was reaching out with his phantom limb to touch the man’s left leg. All at once, a hail of shells
6
The Shadow Of The Mole
passed over, as though the memory of that shrapnel had provoked the Germans at the north side of the Meurisson Valley. The shells drummed the basement walls with their deafening low thunder. Denis pictured the men in the icy trenches at the front, frantically seeking shelter. Since February 12th, after heavy snowfall, a light thaw had set in. It drenched the trenches with cold, gurgling mud, and inundated the mine corridors, used to infiltrate enemy territory, with melted ice: sluggish, foul-reeking, and copper-coloured.
An explosion shook the basement. Denis looked around him. Rumour had it that the Germans, being technically advanced, had electric lighting in their shelters. The French hospital had to make do with candle lanterns. As a result, bizarre shadows waved on the walls in a slow, undulating rhythm. No wonder the wounded called the hospital le pot de chambre de la France. At the moment, the chamber pot of France was a dazzling phantasmagoria of shapes chasing each other on the walls and the floor. Light and darkness played on The Mole’s face.
In the shadows, the man opened his eyes.
***
About the Author
Bob van Laerhoven is a Belgian writer and traveller whose work has been translated into most European languages, as well as Russian and Chinese.
He made his debut as a novelist in 1985 with “Nachtspel – Night Game.” He quickly became known for his colorful, kaleidoscopic novels in which the fate of the individual is closely related to broad social transformations. His style slowly evolved in his later novels to embrace more personal themes while continuing to branch out into the world at large. International flair has become his trademark.
As a travel writer he has explored conflicts and trouble-spots across the globe from the early 1990s to 2004. Echoes of his experiences on the road also trickle through in his novels. During the Bosnian war, Van Laerhoven spent part of 1992 in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Three years later he was working for MSF – Doctors without frontiers – in the Bosnian city of Tuzla during the NATO bombings.
All these experiences contribute to Bob Van Laerhoven’s rich and commendable oeuvre, as the versatile author of novels, travel stories, theatre pieces, biographies, non-fiction, letters, columns, articles…
His work has received many accolades.
The Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime-novel of the year with “De Wraak van Baudelaire – Baudelaire’s Revenge”
Also for Baudelaire’s Revenge, the USA BEST BOOK AWARD 2014 in the category Fiction: mystery/suspense.
“Dangerous Obsessions” was voted “best short story collection of 2015 in The San Diego Book Review.
“Heart Fever” was one of the five finalists – and the only non-American author – of the Silver Falchion Award 2018 in the category “short stories collections.”
“Return to Hiroshima”, was listed in the top ten of international crime novels in 2018 in the British quality review blog “MurderMayhem&More”
“Alejandro’s Lie” was named the best political thriller of 2021 by BestThrillers.com
