Old fashioned derring-do done right.
Spunky Danes spy and fly beneath the radar of their Nazi occupiers.
Follett returns to WWII (Jackdaws, 2001, etc.), where his patriotic newsreel style may be an asset, setting the proper black-and-white tone for a tale about a schoolboy who sticks a spanner in the Germans’ early warning system. Harald Olufson is the mechanically gifted pastor’s son whose dream of studying under countryman Niels Bohr looks impossible after he’s booted from school for an anti-fascist prank. Harald’s hardshell father pulls the plug on university plans and apprentices the boy to a creepy haberdashery, where he is to ponder the error of his ways. But Harald ditches the handkerchiefs and speeds off on his peat-powered motorcycle to find work on a farm near the little castle where beautiful Jewish Karen Duchwitz, promising ballerina and twin sister of a schoolmate, lives with her very rich mum and dad. Karen has had a few flying sessions with Poul, a chum of Harald’s pilot brother Arne, but neither Karen nor Harald is aware that Poul is a member of the Danish resistance, organized from England by Arne’s fiancée Hermia. Hermia has been charged with finding out how the Germans have been able to render nearly useless the waves of bombers the English have been throwing against them. As it happens, Harald has the answer. He just doesn’t know how important it is. Taking a shortcut through a secret German installation on the way home one dark and stormy night, he noted the interesting combination of three radar antennas and deduced correctly that the krauts had invented an efficient warning system. Getting the secret out of Denmark will cost several lives and involve the evil Peter Flemming, a man with a deep-seated grudge against the Olufsons and a deeper-seated admiration for the Germans. It will also require Harald’s handyman skills to get the Duchwitz family’s plane out of storage and into the air.
Old fashioned derring-do done right.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-94689-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
An ambitious, absorbing caper that’s smartly paced, tough-minded and infused with emotional depth.
Mallon’s latest historical novel (after Bandbox, 2004, etc.) takes us back to the nominally peaceful mid-1950s, when the twin menaces of Communism and homosexuality were the real enemies of all things American.
Taking a page or two from Gore Vidal, Mallon juxtaposes the progress of Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s vindictive Un-American Activities Committee with the (similarly verboten) “subversion” practiced by closeted State Department whiz Hawkins Fuller (of godlike face and form, and shifting loyalties) and the young naïf who worships him. Callow senatorial aide Tim Laughlin is soft-shelled meat for the rapacious sexual appetites of the “Hawk”: A gentle, good Catholic boy who hoped political life might make a man of him, he refuses—even in the confessional—to repent of the dark pleasures to which Fuller subjects him. Their relationship takes place over a span of several years marked by the Korean War’s conclusion, the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution and the looming national prominence of V.P. Richard Nixon and Sen. John F. Kennedy. Though the large load of exposition required is not always successfully dramatized, we do learn much about the major issues of the time, and Mallon proves adept at making complex geopolitical matters flesh by filtering them through the viewpoints and agendas of both his principal fictional characters and a lively horde of historical ones, including Washington columnist Mary McGrory, Joseph McCarthy’s duplicitous attack dog Roy Cohn and miscellaneous members of Congress. The fallout from power politics is vividly shown in its destructive relation to Tim Laughlin’s selfless love and vulnerable idealism, as the Hawkins Fullers of the world ride the bubble of their charm, over bodies too numerous to count.
An ambitious, absorbing caper that’s smartly paced, tough-minded and infused with emotional depth.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-375-42348-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A dramatic look at the Pilgrims as seen through women’s eyes.
Ten years after founding the first Pilgrim settlement, the colonists are forced to address the strife that roils beneath their utopian dreams.
It’s an August morning in the Plymouth colony, the year 1630. It’s been 10 years since a group arrived on the Mayflower to start life afresh, and today is a day of great anticipation: A fresh wave of people is expected to arrive. Alice Bradford, wife of the colony’s governor, William, is especially anxious. On this new ship will be her stepson, the child left behind by William and his first wife, Dorothy, when they undertook the perilous Mayflower journey. Alice remains haunted by Dorothy’s death, which occurred under mysterious circumstances, and feels guilt for having usurped her childhood companion for the powerful role of William Bradford’s wife. But the day is full of anticipation in other ways, too. Nesbit (The Wives of Los Alamos, 2014) uses alternating narrators, chiefly Alice Bradford and Eleanor Billington, the wife of a disgruntled, disillusioned colonist, to show the tension and unrest building among those in charge of the fledgling settlement and those who are chafing against the powerful. A murder will be committed by the time this August day has come to a close, and by the time it does, the settlers will question whether or not they are truly “fashioned in God’s favor,” as they once believed. Although the pacing here can be off-putting (the buildup to the promised disaster is long; the climax, too short) and the sensitively rendered but still peripheral role that the Wampanoag Tribe plays could have used more development, Nesbit’s novel has all the juicy sex, lies, and violence of a prestige Netflix drama and shines surprising light on the earliest years of America, massive warts and all.
A dramatic look at the Pilgrims as seen through women’s eyes.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63557-322-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
