Tag: historical thriller

#BookReview Burning Cold (Cara Walden Mystery 2) by Lisa Lieberman

whatcathyreadnext

Burning ColdAbout the Book

Budapest: 1956. Newlywed Cara Walden’s brother Zoltán has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution, harboring a deadly wartime secret. Will Cara or the Soviets find him first?

Cutting short her honeymoon in Paris to rescue a sibling she’s never met was not Cara’s idea, but her husband Jakub has a reckless streak, and she is too much in love to question his judgment. Together with her older brother Gray, they venture behind the Iron Curtain, seeking clues to Zoltán’s whereabouts among his circle of fellow dissidents, all victims of the recently overthrown Communist regime. One of them betrayed him, and Cara realizes that the investigation has put every person they’ve met at risk. Inadvertently, they’ve also unmasked a Russian spy, who is now tailing them in the hope that they will lead him to Zoltán.

Format: ebook (169 pages)                    Publisher: Passport Press
Publication date:  6th October 2019   Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Thriller

Find Burning Cold (Cara Walden Mystery #2) on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

My Review

According to the book description, the film version of Graham Greene’s The Third Man was the inspiration for this historical thriller. Set mainly in post-war Budapest, it certainly has the intrigue and noir feel of The Third Man but I struggled to find many other connections although I admit it’s many years since I watched the film or read the book. What this does mean is lack of familiarity with The Third Man needn’t mar your enjoyment of Burning Cold.

Burning Cold is the second book featuring Cara Walden and there are references to events in the first book. However, I’m pleased to say Burning Cold works perfectly well as a standalone read. In fact, it’s made me keen to read the first book in the series, All the Wrong Places.

I knew little about this period in Hungary’s history before reading the book. The events which unfold in Burning Cold  rectified that omission without ever feeling like a history lesson because of the twists and turns of the plot. The atmosphere of paranoia amongst the population of a city with informers everywhere and who live in fear of the secret police is vividly conjured up. The author also creates an interesting dynamic between Cara, her husband Jakub and her brother, Gray.

Burning Cold is an enjoyable, well-crafted historical mystery that explores the legacy of conflict on families as well as nations.  My thanks to the author for my copy of the book – and her patience in waiting for it to reach the top of my review pile!

In three words: Well-researched, assured, dramatic

Try something similar: The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

Follow my blog via Bloglovin

lisa-lieberman-web-7745About the Author

Lisa Lieberman writes the Cara Walden series of historical mysteries based on old movies and featuring blacklisted Hollywood people on the lam in dangerous international locales.

Trained as a modern European cultural and intellectual historian, Lieberman abandoned a perfectly respectable academic career for the life of a vicarious adventurer through perilous times. She has written extensively on post-war Europe.  Her most recent essay on the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution, “Stalin’s Boots” was the inspiration for Burning Cold, set in Budapest just as the Soviet tanks roll back in, evoking Carol Reed’s classic film of intrigue and betrayal, The Third Man, based on a treatment by Graham Greene. Keeping with the Graham Greene theme, her new Cara Walden mystery, The Glass Forest, takes place in Saigon in 1957, during the filming of The Quiet American.

Lieberman taught history for many years at Dickinson College and directed their Center in Bologna, Italy. She has held visiting fellowships at Ohio State and the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and was the recipient of a Bourse Chateaubriand for research in Paris. In her spare time, Lieberman lectures on post-war efforts to come to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust in film and literature. On the lighter side, she gives talks on cruise ships.

She has published essays, translations, and short stories in Noir City, Gettysburg Review, Raritan, Michigan Quarterly, Mystery Scene and elsewhere and writes film criticism for 3 Quarks Daily. She is Vice President of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime and a member of Mystery Writers of America. (Bio and photo credit: author website)

Connect with Lisa

Website | Facebook

#BookReview Hitler’s Secret by Rory Clements @ZaffreBooks @ReadersFirst1

whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

Hitlers SecretAbout the Book

In the Autumn of 1941, the war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If the tide is going to be turned against Hitler, a new weapon is desperately needed.

In Cambridge, brilliant history professor Tom Wilde is asked by an American intelligence officer to help smuggle a mysterious package out of Nazi Germany – something so secret, even Hitler himself doesn’t know of its existence.

Posing as a German-American industrialist, Wilde soon discovers the shocking truth about the ‘package’, and why the Nazis will stop at nothing to prevent it leaving Germany. With ruthless killers loyal to Martin Bormann hunting him down, Wilde makes a desperate gamble on an unlikely escape route. But even if he reaches England alive, that will not be the end of his ordeal. Wilde is now convinced that the truth he has discovered must remain hidden, even if it means betraying the country he loves

Format: Hardcover (432 pages)           Publisher: Zaffre
Publication date: 23rd January 2020 Genre: Historical fiction, thriller

Find Hitler’s Secret (Tom Wilde #4) on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com| Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

My Review

To my mind, it’s always cause for celebration when a new book by Rory Clements is published, especially when it’s an addition to his terrific spy thriller series set in World War 2 and featuring Cambridge history professor, Tom Wilde. (Links from the titles will take you to my reviews of the previous three books in the series – Corpus, Nucleus and Nemesis.)

Hitler’s Secret sees Tom transported from his usual Cambridge haunts to unfamiliar – in fact, enemy – territory in order to carry out a dangerous task that will see him become involved in political and personal intrigue that goes to the very top of the Third Reich.

The atmosphere of suspicion amongst the population of Germany is vividly evoked – informants everywhere, fear of denunciation or falling foul of the petty bureaucracy of permits. Words you definitely don’t want to hear – “Papers, please” and “Trust me”. And if that isn’t terrifying enough, the bad guys in the book are really bad (and they’re not all guys).

OK, the secret’s not a secret for very long and there are quite a few convenient coincidences and lucky escapes. However, as John Buchan wrote about his own spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, it’s a genre ‘where the incidents defy the probabilities, and march just inside the borders of the possible’. And the plot of Hitler’s Secret progresses at such pace you don’t have time to ponder on the probabilities, you just get carried along wondering what’s going to happen next. Among the best bits of the book are when the action switches swiftly between the parallel storylines of different characters. Come to think of it, Tom Wilde is a rather Buchanesque hero with his facility for languages, for adopting disguises and operating deep undercover. His boxing training comes in useful as well.

Just when Tom believes he’s achieved his mission troubles – and further danger – await closer to home, sometimes from the most unlikely of sources. Plus he’s faced with a moral dilemma made more difficult by his own position as a new father. Is, as the saying goes, all’s fair in love and war?

I was missing the involvement of Tom’s partner, Lydia, up to this point but was pleased to see her play more of a role as the book builds to its nail-biting climax. And it wouldn’t be a Tom Wilde book without an appearance by his beloved Rudge Special motorcycle.

Hitler’s Secret is another terrific addition to the series and a thrilling and immersive read. Thanks to Zaffre and Readers First for my review copy.

In three words: Gripping, tense, atmospheric

Try something similar: Smiley’s People by John le Carré

Follow my blog via Bloglovin

RoryClementsAbout the Author

Rory Clements is a Sunday Times bestselling author. He is twice winner of the CWA Historical Dagger Award, most recently in 2018 for Nucleus, the second Tom Wilde novel. A TV series of Rory’s previous series, the John Shakespeare novels, is currently in development. Rory lives in Norfolk with his family

Connect with Rory

Website | Facebook