Well in this case, the hesitant purchase turned out to be a big winner because this book was awesome. It's probably one of the best adventure books I've read in a while, rivaling Desmond Bagley. Though a huge student of WWII, I tend to not love adventure books that take place then as I am not a big fan of military fiction. I also was worried it was going to be all winter. What made this book so great, was that it has so much going on. We get great espionage and sabotage, as well as a whole section on a Greek ferry that could be right out of Eric Ambler, before we even get to the main adventure, which is a race by a three Brits and a Greek to beat a battalion of elite German Alpenkorps to a monastery on a mountain peak that will give them a huge tactical advantage in their invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia.
The whole second half is alternately tense and hair-raising. It culminates in a wild, explosive finale. I'm being vague here because I don't want to give anything away. The protagonist, Macomber, is kind of a British soldier superman, though of course with zero self-promotion. Just a competent public school boy who kicked around Europe as a kid so perfectly fluent in Greek, French and German (the latter allowing him to march around the boat in the guise of an Abwher agent, flustering his supposed Nazi colleagues with constant criticisms and unsettling questions). I love lines like this, when Macomber explains how when in Bulgaria the British government tapped him to do sabotage jobs on Nazi stockpiles in the Balkans:
"It was lying around in warehouses and railway sidings, so the Ministry brainboxes said would I have a go at it? Very obliging they were too — sent out an explosives man to teach me a trick or two about things that go bang in the night..."
One simply does one's duty, what? A great read and a keeper. Colin Forbes is going to the top of the list.
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