SEVEN MINUTES PAST MIDNIGHT

by Walter Winward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1980

From the author of Fives Wild and Hammerstrike: well-woven melodrama about the last days of Berlin and an Allied commando team sent in to rescue a secret top Nazi from the Russians. A coded message is received by British Intelligence about a German bigwig who wants to defect and give Britain the names of Nazi secret agents in Russia who could be turned into postwar double-agents for Britain. At first Churchill doesn't want to go along, but when Eisenhower redirects the Allied forces through southern Europe and gives Montgomery the lesser job of taking north German towns, he gives the go-ahead. All this is hush-hush from the Americans, of course, but an American cipher clerk intercepts the secret exchange between Berlin and London, breaking the code by sheer accident--and Allen Dulles of OSS decides to inject some Americans into the commando team so we too will have access to the Nazi's secrets. Then, however--after the team has been trained (it includes a woman who can carry off a perfect masquerade as a lady Gestapo officer) and is airborne toward a landing strip in the middle of Berlin--the British find out that one of the team is also a Russian spy intending to kill the Nazi! But which one? That's the question--as we follow the colorful farewell hours of Hitler and his cronies in the Bunker, and at last Martin Bormann (yet again) is revealed as the object of this bloody effort. Quite similar to Gordon McGill's War Story (p. 600)--and both get their best moments from the atmosphere of collapsing Nazi-dom and invading Russians--but more straightforwardly thrillerish. Satisfying, not-quite-plausible suspense action for fans of Nazi-era derring-do.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION