Tag: Reviews

#BlogTour #BookReview Katastrophe by Graham Hurley

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BLOG TOUR BANNER_Katastrophe4Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Katastrophe by Graham Hurley. My thanks to Sophie at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Head of Zeus for my review copy. Do check out the review by my tour buddy for today, Elizabeth at Libcreads.

KatastropheAbout the Book

Confidant of Goebbels. Instrument of Stalin. What’s the worst that could happen?

January 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war?

Two years ago, Werner Nehmann’s war came to an abrupt end in Stalingrad. With the city in ruins, the remains of General Paulus’ Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets, and Nehmann was taken captive. But now he’s riding on the back of one of Marshal Zhukov’s T-34 tanks, heading home with a message for the man who consigned him to the Stalingrad Cauldron.

With the Red Army about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels – and who better to broker the contact than Nehmann, Goebbels’ one-time confidant?

Having swapped the ruins of Stalingrad for the wreckage of Berlin, the influence of Goebbels for the machinations of Stalin, and Gulag rags for a Red Army uniform, Nehmann’s war has taken a turn for the worse. The Germans have a word for it:

Katastrophe.

Format: Hardback (448 pages)  Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 7th July 2022 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Katastrophe on Goodreads

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My Review

Katastrophe, the latest book in the author’s ‘Spoils of War’ series, is set in the final months of the Second World War. There’s a real sense of finality about the book as we witness the ruin of people and places. The terrible and lasting impact of war – physical and psychological – is reflected in the experiences of the four main characters – British MI5 operatives, Tam Moncrieff and Ursula Barton, journalist and propagandist, Werner Nehmann, and German intelligence officer, Wilhelm Schultz – some of whom make return appearances from the author’s previous two novels, Last Flight to Stalingrad and Kyiv.

There are some intense, dark and harrowing scenes involving Nehmann and Schultz, both survivors of the siege of Stalingrad, but now respectively subjected to the horror of a Soviet labour camp and brutal interrogation. Subsequently they find themselves pawns in a wider political game.  For Moncrieff and Barton, their experience is one of overwhelming disillusionment and a sense of betrayal. It’s something that has left Barton ‘a frail, tormented figure’ and Moncrieff with unanswered questions about the fate of someone close to him.

The title of the series – Spoils of War – is particularly apt because in Katastophe the reader sees played out the manoeuvring even amongst supposed allies for control of territory occupied during the conflict. The co-operation that existed between Western nations and the Soviet Union in order to defeat Hitler is crumbling, replaced by suspicion, secrecy and underhand tactics.  Stalin emerges as a ruthless and malevolent player in this attempted power grab. As Ursula Barton observes at one point, ‘The war’s coming to an end. Everyone knows that. The question is how, and when, and who controls which bits of our poor bloody continent when it’s over’. We also witness those formerly high up in the Third Reich, now in shattered pieces, struggling to come to terms with defeat or even in their delusion refusing to accept it.

Behind all the political manouvering the suffering inflicted on civilians on both sides is laid bare: the bombing of cities, the displacement of people, the ravages of hunger or the ruthlessness of invading forces.  It’s brought vividly to life in a way that can’t help make you think of the current situation in Ukraine. Indeed, I found myself thinking of that poor country repeatedly whilst reading the book, leaving me with an overwhelming sense of sadness that we seemed to have learned nothing. As a character observes, ‘No one was ready for Hitler, not because he hadn’t warned them what was coming, but because they hadn’t listened.’ For Hitler, substitute Putin?

Katastrophe is a brilliant blend of fact and fiction that even in its darkest moments remains utterly compelling. It takes a fair degree of skill to create a sense of tension in a series of events where the outcome is already known, but the author definitely achieves it.  I felt totally immersed in the lives of the characters and eager to learn their fate. None of them emerge unscathed but there are one or two glimmers of hope that demonstrate perhaps war hasn’t robbed them all of everything. If Katastrophe does mark the conclusion of the series, it’s definitely ended on a high note.

In three words: Gripping, immersive, masterful

Try something similar: Vienna Spies by Alex Gerlis

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Graham HurleyAbout the Author

Graham Hurley is an award-winning TV documentary maker and the author of the acclaimed Faraday and Winter crime novels, two of which have been shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Award for Best Crime Novel. His Second World War thriller Finisterre, part of the critically acclaimed Spoils of War collection was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Graham
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#WWWWednesday – 6th July 2022

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WWWWednesdays

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

KatastropheKatastrophe by Graham Hurley (ARC, Head of Zeus)

Berlin, January 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war?

Two years ago, Werner Nehmann’s war came to an abrupt end in Stalingrad. With the city in ruins, the remains of General Paulus’ Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets, and Nehmann was taken captive. But now he’s riding on the back of one of Marshal Zhukov’s T-34 tanks, heading home with a message for the man who consigned him to the Stalingrad Cauldron.

Although the Red Army are about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels – and who better to broker the contact than Nehmann, Goebbels’ one-time confidant?

Having swapped the ruins of Stalingrad for the wreckage of Berlin, the influence of Goebbels for the machinations of Stalin, and Gulag rags for a Red Army uniform, Nehmann’s war has taken a turn for the worse. The Germans have a word for it: Katastrophe.

LearwifeLearwife by J. R. Thorp (Canongate)

“I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear’s wife. I am here.”

Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear’s queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story.

Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice – one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests.

Recently finished

Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs (riverrun)

Think of Me by Frances Liardet (4th Estate)

1942, Alexandria, Egypt. Covered in dust, Yvette and James hold hands for the first time as bombs explode above them. As the war rages on, they will find their way back to each other time and again, their love a beacon for their survival. After the war, their happiness takes root in England and blossoms, until a tragic event drives a wedge between them. The way back to one another is uncharted territory that both must be brave enough to face.

1974. Ten years after his wife’s death and with his son now at university, James craves change. He moves to the beautiful English village of Upton not thirty minutes from the city where he brought his bride Yvette, nearly twenty-five years ago. There he discovers a scarf that lights the dark edges of his memory. Could it be Yvette’s? As James makes a new home for himself and gently presses into the feelings the scarf evokes, he begins to unlock new revelations about his past that change everything he believes. Revelations that just might give James a new reason to live and the possibility of new love at last, after ten years alone. (Review to follow)

 

What Cathy (will) Read Next

The Cleaner of ChartresThe Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers (Penguin)

There is something special about the ancient cathedral of Chartres, with its mismatched spires, astonishing stained glass and strange labyrinth. And there is something special too about Agnès Morel, the mysterious woman who is to be found cleaning it each morning.

No one quite knows where she came from – not the diffident Abbé Paul, who discovered her one morning twenty years ago, sleeping in the north porch; nor lonely Professor Jones, whose chaotic existence she helps to organise; nor Philippe Nevers, whose neurotic sister and newborn child she cares for; nor even the irreverent young restorer, Alain Fleury, who works alongside her each day and whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes, her colourful clothes and elusive manner. And yet everyone she encounters would surely agree that she is subtly transforming their lives, even if they couldn’t quite say how.

But with a chance meeting in the cathedral one day, the spectre of Agnès’ past returns, provoking malicious rumours from the prejudiced Madame Beck and her gossipy companion Madame Picot. As the hearsay grows uglier, Agnès is forced to confront her history, and the mystery of her origins finally unfolds.