A World War II mystery surfaces fifty years later as land is developed in Alderney. This is only Walters’ third thriller but I do wholeheartedly recommend him. Well written, steeped in historical atmosphere, tense, taut and truly page-turning stuff, he is certainly worth a try. Comparison: Frederick Forsyth, Gerald Seymour, Duncan Falconer. Similar this month: Jack Higgins, Ken Follett.
February 1945. As the Allies make great gains in France, the Channel Islands remain a bastion of Nazi-occupied territory. On Jersey, Lieutenant-Colonel Max von Luck is in charge of liaising with the civilian population. He has little time for his fanatical colleagues, and has earned the respect of many of the Islanders. In his bunker in Berlin, Hitler decides to deploy the V3 - a weapon so secret that even the slave labourers constructing it deep beneath the island of Alderney do not know its exact purpose. June 1990. Workmen digging the foundations for a new hotel start to fall sick. Their illness is similar to that suffered by many islanders over the past half-century. Journalist Robert Lebonneur is suspicious. Then he finds a diary written by Lieutenant-Colonel Max von Luck during the wartime occupation. The diary makes it clear that much more is at stake than a mysterious illness. As Lebonneur investigates, he begins to run into the same dark forces that von Luck found himslf up against nearly half a century before...
Guy Walters was a journalist on The Times for eight years, travelling around the world and reporting on a wide variety of subjects. He is married to the author Annabel Venning and they have one son. He is also the co-editor of THE VOICE OF WAR, an anthology of World War Two memoirs.
