A Gathering of Spies [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD]

John Altman (Author), Michael Page (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 25, 2005

In 1943, America thought it had rounded up all the German spies on its soil. Now Germany's greatest weapon - a woman with special talents, both for tradecraft and for death - is headed home with critical information about the still-developing atomic bomb, and the Allies chief hope for stopping her is a British agent with agendas of his own. Originally recruited into MI5 to pose as a double agent, he's been telling Germans that he'd do anything to free his wife, a prisoner of a Polish concentration camp. This happens to be true. The question is: how much would he really do to set her free? Where are his loyalties exactly? As the two spies play cat-and-mouse across three countries, the ambiguities deepen, each figure showing new sides, each action providing new twists, until at last both agents are swept into a series of climaxes as breathtakingly unpredictable as they are inevitable.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his debut novel, A Gathering of Spies, John Altman delivers an old-fashioned page-turner, energetically told. Katarina Heinrich is a beautiful Nazi spy living in deep cover as the wife of a Princeton professor. When her husband is hired to help develop the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, Catherine, as she is known, uncovers the secret and resolves to carry it to Germany at all costs.

A Gathering of Spies fuses the plots of Katarina and a British double agent, Winterbotham, whose wife is incarcerated in a Polish prison camp. Winterbotham believes he will do anything to obtain her freedom. Does that include trading the Allies' greatest secrets? In an exciting role reversal, Katarina is the superhuman agent capable of storming a British stronghold and retrieving a high-ranking German prisoner. Winterbotham, by contrast, is cerebral and unknown even to himself. His secret plots are revealed subtly.

If there is a flaw in A Gathering of Spies, it is that Altman's plots get too intertwined. You might find yourself having to reread passages to get the buried implications. But Altman never commits the cardinal sin of obscuring important clues only to illuminate them in the last pages for the aha! conclusion. A Gathering of Spies represents titans like Einstein, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Hitler with casual confidence--there to remind us that the stakes of this mystery are nothing less than the fate of the world. --Kathi Inman Berens --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This atmospheric debut thriller smells deliciously of Hitchcock and 1940s British spy films. Beautiful Catherine Danielson Carter is really Katarina Heinrich, a Nazi spy who has gone deep undercover, found work as a housekeeper in Princeton, N.J., and married her employer. As the wife of aging nuclear scientist Richard Carter, Katarina is able to get work at a federal shipbuilding plant. Her instincts are aroused when her husband is invited to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, N.M. Taking advantage of her situation, Katarina finds a letter from Albert Einstein that details the plans for the A-bomb. Galvanized into action, she murders her way to several new identities in her quest to get her information to London, where her former lover and fellow agent, Fritz Meissner, is stationed. Fritz has ostensibly been recruited by the British as a double agent working for Operation Double Cross, feeding misinformation to the Germans. The Americans discover Katarina's true identity and trail her to England, where they warn Andrew Taylor, head of MI5. He, in turn, recruits brilliant Prof. Harry Winterbotham to expose Fritz and aid in the search for Katarina. Winterbotham agrees to help, while hatching a secret plan to rescue his Jewish wife, who is trapped in Poland. In painting a perfect WWII British setting complete with quirky characters reeking of mutton and pipe tobacco, Altman belies his U.S. origins. But throw in Admiral Canaris's plot to assassinate Hitler, a double- or triple-cross in every chapter, covert Nazi submarines, a lighthouse and a plethora of bodies, and you get an irresistible page-turner from a welcome new voice in the genre. 75,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; foreign rights sold in Italy and the Netherlands. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• MP3 CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on MP3-CD; MP3 Una edition (February 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596005750
• ISBN-13: 978-1596005754
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,961,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable First Novel, November 7, 2001

By 

Newt Gingrich (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
("THE")   

This review is from: A Gathering of Spies (Paperback)

This is a remarkable first novel that carries you from Hitler's Germany to the nuclear laboratory at Las Alamos to the Double Cross system by which Britain had turned German spies and was using them to feed false information to the Nazis to the personal problems of a British professor who had been for compromising with Hitler before the war and whose wife was being held in a German concentration camp.

Part of the power of this novel comes from the startling contrast between the totally dedicated German spy who has no human ties, no fondness for the Americans she is surrounded by, no sentiment toward the physicist husband she has taken and is driven by her duty and her assignment and the British professor who wants his country to win but much more deeply wants his wife to be safe. The one is hard, alienated, and driven, the other is soft, complex and uncertain. Yet, in the end the British Professor's determination to save his wife is an even more effective force than the German spy's desire to fulfil her mission.

The intricacies of both the American scene from Princeton to Los Alamos and the building of the bomb and the deprivation and determination of wartime Britain using German spies to send false messages back to Germany are both compelling.

Altman fits these pieces of the puzzle into a believable and fascinating story which will keep you going. If you like spies, complexity, and fast paced adventure you will read this novel and look forward to Altman's next book as I do.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a superb read, January 23, 2001

By 

Kip "goodrottie" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Gathering of Spies (Hardcover)

reminded me of early Ken Follet with Day of the Jackal overtones. I read this one straight through. Not quite as good as Black Cross but an excellent novel. Hard to believe this is Altmans first novel. An exceptional talent.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved The Book!, January 5, 2001

By 

"[e-mail]" (Santa Barbara, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Gathering of Spies (Hardcover)

This was one of several books I got at Christmas, and it did not disappoint. As a fan of the genre, I think Altman is a welcome new addition. This spy book is definitely NOT the same old, same old. I couldn't put it down once I started it. Bravo!