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Sto caricando le informazioni... A Gathering of Saints (1996)di Christopher Hyde
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"Riveting in intensity, A Gathering of Saints defies belief - yet the characters, the crimes, the lies, the treachery, and the terror portrayed here are based on true but secret episodes from the dark early hours of the Second World War." "At summer's end in 1940, London skies turn war-black as Hitler's airborne hordes begin the Blitz. From the bustling working-class East End to the Underground Stations at Charing Cross and Leicester Square, lethal Nazi Flammenbomben transform the city into a cauldron of human suffering. Against this terrifying scene, a lone psychopath plays his own ghastly game, stalking individual victims and killing them with methodical precision. Probing the murders is Detective Inspector Morris Black of Scotland Yard, a middle-aged Jewish widower gifted with an uncanny ability to divine the truth of a crime from the most meager evidence. As Black tracks his man - whom he dubs Queer Jack - from corpse to corpse, he discovers that each victim was killed at the site of a devastating Luftwaffe raid, only hours before the raid occurred!" "Black soon learns how explosive his discovery is when he is summoned into Churchill's Magic Circle - the supersecret group of officers, politicians, and spies desperate to draw the United States into war despite rumors that American ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and his British allies want a separate peace with Hitler. Churchill's men tell Black that British intelligence has cracked "Ultra," the Nazi military code. The secret must be kept from the Nazis - even if it means allowing thousands to be killed in cities the Magic Circle knows are about to be bombed. An even worse truth is revealed to Black - a Nazi spy in Britain, known to Intelligence as The Doctor, is probably on the trail of Queer Jack too. Somehow, the murderer knows the Ultra secret. If The Doctor finds him first, the Nazis will know that their code has been broken, and Britain could lose the war."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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A good spy-mystery-murder-suspense, summer-time reading. The story is set in London in 1940 during the Blitz and Hyde weaves a complicated pattern with a serial murderer, British and US intelligence, British traitors, Nazi-sympathizers at the highest levels of the British government, and Enigma. The main character in Morris Black, Scotland Yard Detective Inspector, somewhat held back by his Jewishness, recenlty widowed, and unsure of himself and his future. Another is the Doctor, a well-known, well-placed British psychiatrist who is in fact a key spy for Heydrich. An interesting twist on the story is that both Black and the Doctor end up chasing the same serial killer, first having determined his identity through different routes of research and information. If the Doctor finds him first, it will spell the end of Enigma. The requisite lovelife angle is provided by an American journalist-spy who falls for Black.
Some very good descriptions of the Blitz and the fact that it was not all stiff-upper-lip stuff as usually depicted in the old WWII movies; good descriptions of the effect of a massive bombing of a city; good plot twists and action; good charcters in Black and the host of shady spies and counterspies that he is thrown in with; an exciting climax in the dome of St.Paul's Cathedral in the midst of a terrific bombing/fire raid on the city; and a host of historical figures convincingly woven in: Anthony Blunt, CP Snow, Ian Flemming, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and others. A bit gruesome when the serial killer gets the better of the Doctor, but I suppose such madness does exist. A good cottage read.