December 1940 and England lies under German occupation. In the West Country, Nick Penny comes home after four months as a prisoner of war to act as interpreter to the provincial governor. He finds his father dead, his mother crippled, and his best friend Roy heavily involved in a resistance movement. When war hero Matty Cordington returns to run his father's estate, the three friends are re-united in a common purpose. Life under the occupation becomes a compromise at every level. Nick's sister Joan sleeps with a profiteer to find food for her family. There are leaks in the resistance movement, and Matty's girlfriend is fingered and dispatched. The occupation turns nastier as Hitler invades Russia, with less food and greater demands on the civilian population to labour in the Reich. Britain's Jews are first deported, then the 'Final Solution' is enacted on English soil. But treachery still dogs the resistance and, hunted by the Gestapo and the British police, Nick and his girlfriend Angel desperately race to eliminate the real traitor. The story then escalates to an explosive climax at the very centre of occupational power.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Murray Davies is the author of three previous thrillers, The Drumbeat of Jimmy Sandes, The Samson Option, and The Devil's Handshake. He lives in Greenwich and Wiltshire.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating and excellent read!,
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This review is from: Collaborator (Hardcover)
This is a fascinating novel. It is extremely well written, the characters are well developed, and the complicated relationships between them even better so. It is a long book, but justifiably so. There is a lot to tell, and some of it, like a real occupation (especially its particularly gruesome side) has to be built up slowly. It made me think of how it must have been during the German occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II. Except in this novel, the entire United Kingdom has been occupied by the Germans during World War II. It is a fascinating and very well-developed story, which begins with the arrival home of Nick Penny, who has been in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Penny returns home, to find his father killed and his mother savagely handicapped by the occupiers. Since Penny has fluent German, he is quickly put to work for the occupiers, much to the horror of his family and friends. Davies does a brilliant job of describing an utterly difficult situation. How far are you willing to go to survive in an occupation? How grey is the ground between patriotism and becoming a traitor. Davies develops several of these themes very well in his story, from the nosey neighbour who "drops in" periodically for whatever fabricated reason, using her time in their house to do a quick reconnaissance to report back to the local GESTAPO; to a member of his own family, who will sacrifice her own pride by performing sexual favours for a known collaborator to make her own family's life easier. There are too many themes to comment on here, but each one is dealt with perfectly, and is creatively woven into the story. I also particularly liked that Davies attempted to show a balanced view of the occupying power, and did not see fit to cast every German in his story as a rabid Nazi. I also cannot help but wonder if this story is a reflection on events that must be happening right now during the occupation of Iraq. Can you imagine, an Iraqi who could speak English and is made to work for the occupying Coalition. Does he face the same fury from his old friends? Well, I guess that that is subject matter for novels to come!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant suspense novel; what might have happened had the Nazis seized England?,
By
This review is from: Collaborator (Paperback)
The provocative premise of this fascinating thriller is that the Nazis did indeed invade England in the summer of 1940, and that they overwhelmed the country's defending forces. Now months have passed, and the country and its occupiers are trying -- uneasily -- to get used to a new reality. Nick Penny is released from a prisoner of war camp to return to his home town (which bears a strong resemblance to Plymouth, or some other naval base) and work as a translator and 'cultural interpreter' between the occupying German army and the locals. His father is dead (killed in a futile effort to resist the invaders), his mother badly injured after protecting schoolchildren from a dive bomber. His sister and nephew are both finding themselves forced to make very different kinds of accomodations with their new rulers.
The idea itself is gripping enough, offering up a lot of dramatic possibilities as Nick tries to balance his sense of patriotism and justice with the pragmatic demands of his new job (failure will mean being shipped off as a slave laborer to Germany...) But Davies offers his readers far more than that, as Nick becomes entangled with a nascent resistance force, and has to figure out who are the real collaborators and who he can trust. The first time I read this book, I didn't stop turning the pages until I was through (making a work project late...) and now that I've re-read it a few times I still find the plot's twists and turns just as compelling. The identity of the real 'collaborator' remains a mystery up to the very end, and there's a classic race by Nick and his girlfriend (and occasional assassin for the resistance), Angel, to London to prevent a calamity at the end of the book. One kind of calamity is averted, but another follows... This is an excellent book, highly recommended to anyone with any interest in a different kind of suspense or thriller. While the plotline has some superficial similarities to Robert Harris's breakthrough novel, Fatherland, this is a far better and more suspenseful book.
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