Welcome to my wrap-up of the books I read in June. I managed to get through nine despite it being the busiest period of the gardening year. I can read a book in the garden but I can’t stop myself putting it down when I spot something that needs doing!
Links from each title will take you to my full review or the book description on Goodreads. Check out the list of all the books I’ve read so far in 2024. If we’re not already friends on Goodreads, send me a friend request or follow my reviews.
My thanks to Canongate, Allison & Busby, Gallic Books, Transworld Books and Charlie Laidlaw for providing me with digital review copies.
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate) – an enthralling, skilfully crafted combination of love story and adventure set in 19th century Montana
The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear (Allison & Busby) – a beautifully balanced blend of heartbreak and hope for the future, and the perfect end to a wonderfully entertaining series
French Windows by Antoine Laurain. trans. by Louise Rogers Lalaurie (Gallic Books) – a wonderfully quirky and entertaining take on the classic film, Rear Window
Alvesdon by James Holland (Transworld Books) – an absorbing family saga set in WW2
The Days Of Our Birth by Charlie Laidlaw – a thoughtful, beautifully written story about the bond between two people
What were the best books you read last month? Have you read any of my picks?
Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Dead Ground by Graham Hurley, published today by Aries Fiction. My thanks to Poppy at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my digital review copy via NetGalley.
About the Book
1936. Anglo-Breton translator Annie Wrenne is working in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. Annie becomes a nurse on the front line, but after falling in love with a patient, she ends up pregnant – and abandoned – by a man she thought she knew.
Annie passes the rest of the war in a haze, her only consolation her relationship with mysterious Republican fighter Carlos Ortega. Annie finds herself caught up in Ortega’s world, a web of intrigue, which leads to her recruitment into MI5.
On her first mission, Annie must pose as Ortega’s wife and head to Algeciras. Hitler’s Operation Felix – his plan to control the Mediterranean and force Churchill to the negotiating table – has been set into motion, and the ‘couple’ must help prevent the Nazis from seizing Gibraltar.
But Ortega has secretly been working for the Nationalists, part of Madrid’s Fifth Column. If it falls to Annie – and Ortega – to save the day for the Allied cause, can she trust a man who has changed sides yet again?
Format: Hardback (400 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus Publication date: 4th July 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller
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My Review
Dead Ground is the ninth book in the ‘Spoils of War’ collection. The books do not run chronologically, instead each one focuses on a key event in the run-up to or during WW2, spanning the period from 1936 to the last days of the war. This non-sequential structure means books can be read in any order or as standalones. Having said that, some characters feature in multiple books, including Tam Moncrieff and Annie Wrenne who have key roles in Dead Ground. There’s also a walk-on part for a character from Last Flight to Stalingrad that neatly foreshadows his role in that book.
Annie has developed a deep love of Spain and its culture, especially the work of Goya. She is dismayed by the Spain she finds now that Franco has gained power, a Spain she almost doesn’t recognize. And in Madrid the scars of the vicious civil war are all too obvious. ‘When she’d first arrived… it had been full of promise. Now, years later, it was a grotesque shadow of its former self, an assortment of ruined buildings, feral dogs, starving kids and hospitals bursting with unfinished business.’
In a way, Admiral Canaris shares Annie’s sense of disillusionment. He has grown disgusted by what Germany has become under Adolf Hitler and appalled by the unnecessary savagery being inflicted on the population of countries overrun by the Nazis. He is concerned too at the growing influence of Himmler’s SS which threatens his own Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence organisation. Therefore he has an interest in attempting to restrain Hitler’s wilder schemes. One such is the capture of Gibraltar, the success of which depends on the support of Franco, a notoriously difficult man to pin down. Canaris’s actions place him in a risky situation – fatally risky, as history will bear out.
Naturally the British objective is also to prevent the capture of Gibraltar, a place of great strategic value. It starts a cat-and-mouse game in which each sides seeks to influence events using all the assets at their disposal. Key to this is intelligence which is where Tam Moncrieff and Annie Wrenne come in. Tam recruits Annie, a fluent Spanish speaker, to gather information from foreign journalists based in Madrid. She comes up trumps with one particular piece of information that could change the tide of events – but will it, and does everyone actually want it to?
The author has a brilliant knack for taking real historical events, crafting a tautly plotted thriller around them and peopling it with an interesting mix of real and fictional characters. A history ‘lesson’, if you like, but in an easily digestible form. The standout character for me was the enigmatic Carlos Ortega, a skilled sniper severely facially disfigured in the civil war. Annie’s first encounter with Ortega comes just at the point where she has been cruelly betrayed by someone she thought she knew and could trust. Yet her kindness towards Ortega shows she retains an innate sense of empathy for others. Theirs becomes a partnership that you suspect might have become something more under different circumstances.
Dead Ground is a gripping historical thriller with twists and turns aplenty. I can’t wait to see where and when Graham Hurley takes us next.
In three words: Compelling, pacy, suspenseful Try something similar: City of Spies by Mara Timon
About the Author
Graham Hurley is a documentary-maker and novelist. For the last two decades he’s written full-time, penning nearly fifty books. Two made the shortlist for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award Crime Novel of the Year, while Finisterre – the first in the Spoils of War collection – was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Award.
Graham lives in East Devon with wife, Lin. (Photo: Goodreads author page)
Welcome to my wrap-up of the books I read in June. I managed to get through nine despite it being the busiest period of the gardening year. I can read a book in the garden but I can’t stop myself putting it down when I spot something that needs doing!
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (Canongate) – an enthralling, skilfully crafted combination of love story and adventure set in 19th century Montana
What Cathy Read Next... 