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Product Description: "In wartime," Winston Churchill wrote, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." For Britain's counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable-a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer-and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day...
Amazon.com Review: In this debut novel, veteran journalist Silva mines the reliable territory of World War II espionage to produce a gripping, historically detailed thriller. In early 1944 the Allies were preparing their invasion of Normandy; critical to the invasion's success was an elaborate set of deceptions--from phony radio signals to bogus airfields and barracks--intended to keep Hitler in the dark about when and where the Allied troops would arrive. Catherine Blake is the beautiful, ruthless spy who could bring the whole charade crashing down; Alfred Vicary is the brilliant but bumbling professor Churchill has tapped to protect the operation. Along with a teeming cast of other characters, real and fictional, they bring the chase to a furious and satisfying climax.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - The American Frederick Forsyth
Having more narrative twists than a Cedar Point roller coaster (in Sandusky, Ohio), this wonderful espionage thriller in the vein of Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, has firmly put me on the path of reading Daniel Silva.
I haven't been disappointed yet.
The ending of The Unlikely Spy is quite engaging, and the depiction of Prime Minister Churchill is quite unforgettable. Having him taking a tubby while sending an academic on to an important counter spy effort is really a wonderful scene.
And the character development is really extraordinary. I never thought I could almost cheer on a German spy on English soil during WWII while simultaneously hoping she were undone. How'd Mr. Silva accomplish that?
Rating: - The Unlikely Ending. All that equisite buildup, to a fatally flawed finale. Bother.
Fun, suspensful, till...(Spoiler alert) Would a German Sub captain who knows a thirty-foot boat is full of English MI-5 just fire a shot across its bows? Worse--a 195 foot English Navy Corvette, armed with a 100mm gun, a two-pound pom pom gun, two 20mm guns, and depth charges--when one of these sub killers sees a German sub on the surface, would it not poke a hole or two in it, preventing the escape of a couple German spies? Would it really only shoot machine guns at the spies on their diapidated fishing boat, while allowing their escape route to escape? Silva, get a grip. Put out a corrected edition.
Rating: - A fine WW II spy thriller
This was my introduction to the work of Daniel Silva. I found the book very satisfying. As with any spy thriller, the narrative is filled with enough twists and turns to make you dizzy. The trick of alternating between the "present" and the "history" is carried off smoothly. I thought the multitude of characters, together with the flashbacks, would confuse me badly; it didn't. The progress of the plot was clear, without the mystifying vagueries that LeCarre used so effectively.
The final unveiling of who-was-good-or-evil was a bit of a let-down, but the forward thrust of the narrative throughout was enough to make this a good read.
Rating: - Silva is taking a month out of my life!
I stumbled across "Mark of the Assassin" a couple weeks ago. Upon completion, I purchased every available novel written by Silva.
"The Unlikely Spy" is more complicated than most thrillers. It is also not as polished as his later novels. It does clearly show a remarkable talent for research and crafting a tale that expertly weaves both fact and fiction.
My theory however is that maybe Canaris outfoxed Hitler into biting on the ruse that Normandy was not our first choice. I think much of Hitlers staff wanted the war to end and the madness to stop. Clearly better to have the Americans get their first over the Ivans.
Either that or Hitlers spy network pretty well sucked. Of course, gathering accurate intelligence is hard to do. That is why it is usually wrong.
If you like spy thrillers, Silva is at the top of the game.
Rating: - An engrossing thriller
I won't attempt to summarize the plot of this great novel, as many other reviewers have done that already.
What I will say is that this is one of the most exciting and cleverly written spy novels I have read in a long time. True, there is much that is familiar with other novels of this WWII genre, but the characters, historical placement, plot, scene descriptions, tension, conclusion, and wrap-up make this a book well worth your time. I think that Silva has done a wonderful job in painting a picture of wartime England and Germany, and you can almost feel yourself bumping around in the darkened streets of London.
There are only a couple of places in the book where it seems that the good guys "lucked out", but that is a minor critique. The plot builds and moves through a series of intricate twists that rival the writings of other masters such as le Carre.
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