Salzburg Connection

One of my favorite thrillers. I was delighted to track down a copy, since mine fell apart and was discarded years ago. Not great literature, but great entertainment for a cold, snowy winter weekend. I've visited Salzburg a couple of times, and MacInnes captures the feel of the lovely city and the Salzkammergut region. I read all of her books back in the '70s, but this is my favorite. Too bad the movie did not do justice to the book. It probably would have worked better as a BBC mini-series.

Helen MacInnes' 1968 novel "The Salzburg Connection" twists like a mountain road in Austria. The characters do not get overly deep as MacInnes focuses on the swirl of events. As the novel begins and we join Richard Bryant on finally following a lead from the war on where the Nazis hid a box of important secrets in the obscure Finstersee Lake high in the Alps, we begin to wonder if there's going to be a dead body for every chapter. He ditches his wetsuit in time to encounter watchdog Nazi August Grell who runs a local inn. Grell's disposal of Bryant winds up in the accidental offing of his son Anton. The novel then shifts to Salzburg where worried wife Anna waits for Richard's return. Her bother Johann waits with her. There is a bogus publishing deal as the American lawyer, Bill Mathison, from the firm comes to investigate why a scientific publisher has signed a contract and issued an advance for a coffee table book of photographs of Austrian lakes. Mathison encounters an accidental acquaintance of Elissa as he is trying to ditch people following him. Elissa pops up repeatedly with different names, seems to track Mathison and eventually lures him to his second assassination attempt. After heading back to report to the publisher in New York and meeting F.B.I. agent Nield, Matison is headed Zurich where the publisher's representative Yates appears to be using the job as a cover for espionage. Bill is joined by Lynn Conway from the firm just in time for her to witness his attempted assassination. They are encouraged to leave Switzerland which takes them back into Salzburg, Austria amid American, British, Chinese, Russian and Nazi operatives all trying to recover Bryant's box of secrets. MacInnes keeps you burning the pages to find out what the next turn of events may be until the explosive ending. She throws in a hint of romance as the attractive Mathison has a flare for the ladies. This is an excellent reading experience, longer on plot than character, but a delicious tale. Enjoy!

I bought one of MacInnes' spy thrillers in a small drug store in Kentucky during Christmas vacation in the late sixties and then read them all. For a grad student locked into classroom and homework, it was perfect escapism, a way to travel to exotic places like old Europe and experience the flavor of the WWII era without getting hurt. After MacInnes, nothing else in the mystery category satisfied me, until I accidentally discovered Donna Leon's Inspector Brunetti and his interesting wife...

This is a really good novel, full of suspense. A tale of espionage, this is about the search for an old chest full of nazi documents. With agents from all sides trying to get to it, a lot of dead bodies turn up. Written some years ago, this is worth reading, with an unexpected, everyman hero.

Certainly it is one of Helen MacInnes' most suspenseful novels! In "The Salzburg Connection," MacInnes once again couples history with the present. This time, however, she doesn't have to go back so far. In a deep lake in the Austrian Alps lies a chest filled with Nazi secrets and agents from a number of countries are most eager to get possession of such a potetntial "weapon"--it doesn't contain literal treasure, but lists of "who's who and who's what" during the Nazi period. It is supposed that there are names in this chest of quite successful individuals who were able to escape their (hidden) Nazi past. You can imagine the urgency to get the chest. MacInnes is a master at being in control of her thrillers. Too, she is quite excellent in her description of the settings; her characterization is also superb. Bill Mathison, a New York lawyer, has the inside track here and must face perilous times in his pursuit. Along the way, he also meets two beautiful women, both of whom are eager to help him, and one of whom is set to betray him. In the most deadly fashion!([email protected])