A Prince and a Spy

Starred review from July 19, 2021
At the start of Clements’s outstanding fifth spy thriller featuring American professor Tom Wilde, the first to be published in the U.S., Prince George, the Duke of Kent and brother to George VI, embarks on a covert diplomatic mission to Stockholm, Sweden, in 1942. There, the duke meets a German cousin, Prince Philipp von Hessen, who suggests an accommodation that would preserve the British Empire while Germany protects a federal Europe against “the Asiatic hordes.” The duke is skeptical but agrees to continue the dialogue privately. Back in London, Wilde, an OSS operative, is approached by former student, Peter Cazerove, who admits he betrayed his employers at the War Office by revealing the details of an Allied raid in France to the Nazis, leading to its disastrous failure. Before taking poison, Cazerove says, without specifics, that he also did something even worse. After Wilde learns the Duke of Kent has just died in an airplane crash, he suspects the crash was no accident and Cazerove was involved. Clements (the John Shakespeare series) makes the details of the era’s tradecraft plausible, and his characters, both fictional and real, fully realized. Ken Follett fans will be engrossed.

August 1, 2021
Clements' WWII thriller's long but outstanding writing, riveting plot, vivid characters, taut suspense, and plenty of twists make it a five-star read. American Thomas Wilde, a professor at Cambridge, is President Roosevelt's friend, and, with WWII heating up, Roosevelt asks him to help establish the London branch of America's OSS security agency. When the Duke of Kent, also a friend of Roosevelt's, is killed in a plane crash in Scotland, Roosevelt asks Wilde to find out what happened. Wilde is soon drawn into a byzantine plot involving government conspiracies, betrayals, a rogue British agent, murder, and dark hints of Hitler's horrifying plan to exterminate the Jews. Wilde finds evidence to indicate the duke's plane was sabotaged, given that it was supposedly carrying documents stolen from the German government proving Hitler was already setting up death camps. Accused of a brutal murder, Wilde is forced to go on the run. Can he prove his innocence, discover what really happened to the duke's plane, track down the stolen documents, and, most important, convince Winston Churchill that Hitler's plans are real and must be stopped? Part fact-based historical fiction, part spy thriller, and part high-octane adventure with a soup�on of romance, this outstanding tale will have wide appeal.

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