The Nostradamus Traitor

This is the first in the Big Herbie Kruger series, salted with all of the convolutions and red herrings you'd expect froma writer of Gardner's status. Opening with a strange encounter at the Tower of London between a widowed German woman who wants to find out where her captured spy husband is buried, the story jumps between the present, 1978 and flash backs to a WW2 plot to kill not Hitler but Himmler. Hang onto your train seat for a tension filled incursion by a young George Thomas into the heart of the Nazi homeland. For those of you who miss the intrigue of the non-technical, pre-satellite, pre-electronic communications spying and are enamoured of the HumanInt actions of people under deep cover, this is a book for you. Filled with twists and turns, deceptions, moles, drops into occupied France, false identities, and misdirections galore, the story unfolds as Herbie "the Confessor" untangles those twists while inteviewing George Thomas, now the head of Forward Planning Europe. For fans of the later Kruger books (Maestro and Confessor,), the novel also offers a look at the immature Young Worboys, new to the field, a complete neophyte with an exaggerated opinion of his skills. It's a good read.