October 2, 2017
Set in 1946, bestseller Griffin and son Butterworth’s flat, meandering fourth Clandestine Operations novel (after 2016’s Curtain of Death) finds Capt. James D. Cronley Jr., chief of the Directorate of Central Intelligence in Europe, tasked by President Truman with beefing up security for Justice Bob Jackson, the chief prosecutor of the war crime trials in Nuremberg. “Loose Cannon” Cronley delegates the justice’s protection to one of his officers and concentrates on capturing Franz von Dietelburg, the SS brigadeführer who heads Odessa, the postwar organization that’s smuggling Nazis into Argentina. Cronley also investigates a Nazi cult established by Heinrich Himmler, the location of stolen Nazi gold, and a lot more. Numerous characters enter and exit for no apparent purpose other than to deliver lengthy history lectures. A handful of action scenes do little to interrupt the chinfest. Hopefully, the authors will strike a better balance between talk and action next time. Agent: Robert Youdelman, Rember & Curtis.
November 15, 2017
The fourth novel in the Clandestine Operations series continues to showcase that cloak-and-dagger period between the end of WWII and the establishment of the CIA. Jim Cronley is awarded the Legion of Merit, but winning that honor means he's lost his job as chief of the Europe station of the new intelligence organization. President Truman has other plans for Cronley, who is assigned to protect the head prosecutor of the U.S. delegation to the Nuremberg trials. The Russians have their own ideas, however, leaving Cronley to uncover the true motives driving the multiple players in this international espionage drama. Fans of this series, and of Griffin and Butterworth's military thrillers in general, will already know to expect both a dialogue-heavy narrative starring a savvy hero and a vivid evocation of a tumultuous period in world history. Beyond the established audience, however, this will appeal to all readers who savor historical fiction set in the immediate postwar era (Joseph Kanon's The Good German, 2001, for example). One minor caveat: starting at the first book in the series, Top Secret (2014), will guarantee maximum enjoyment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2017
In this next in the authors' "Clandestine Operations" series, set at the dawning of the Cold War, Jim Cronley is shoved out as chief, DCI-Europe, in favor of a new assignment. He must keep the U.S. chief prosecutor at Nuremberg from being kidnapped by the Soviet NKVD while seeking out and destroying Odessa, an organization that helps Nazi war criminals escape to South America. Is this why he's nearly been killed twice?
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