Book details

Book description

In February 1941 British Command surrendered to the Nazis. Churchill has been executed, the King is in the Tower and the SS are in Whitehall…

For nine months Britain has been occupied - a blitzed, depressed and dingy country. However, it's 'business as usual' at Scotland Yard run by the SS when Detective Inspector Archer is assigned to a routine murder case. Life must go on.

But when SS Standartenfuhrer Huth arrives from Berlin with orders from the great Himmler himself to supervise the investigation, the resourceful Archer finds himself caught up in a high level, all action, espionage battle.

This is a spy story quite different from any other. Only Deighton, with his flair for historical research and his narrative genius, could have written it. 'A brilliant picture of Britain under German rule' Sunday Telegraph

'One of Deighton's best. Apart from his virtues as a storyteller, his passion for researching his backgrounds gives his work a remarkable factual authority. With Bomber and Fighter he established himself as an expert on a period… the authority of these books seem absolute.' The Observer

'Len Deighton is the Flaubert of the contemporary thriller writers… there can be little doubt that this is much the way things would have turned out if the Germans had won the war.' Michael Howard, Times Literary Supplement

'Deighton is a tremendous weaver of tales… action is all, and splendidly done.'

'A master of fictional espionage.' Daily Mail

'The poet of the spy story.' Sunday Times

'For sheer readability he has no peer' The Standard Born in London, Len Deighton served in the RAF before graduating from the Royal College of Art (which recently elected him a Senior Fellow). While in New York City working as a magazine illustrator he began writing his first novel, The Ipcress File, which was published in 1962. He is now the author of more than thirty books of fiction and non-fiction. At present living in Europe, he has, over the years, lived with his family in ten different countries from Austria to Portugal.