THE ARMAGEDDON SECRET

A small group in Germany aims to stop the Nazis from completing the world’s first atomic bomb in this debut World War II thriller.

As an American reporter in 1938 Berlin, Alexander Drake finds that his chief concern is Nazi censorship. That is, until the resistance cell Black Orchestra ropes him in. The group wants Drake’s help (and his United States connections) to prevent the Nazis from building the kind of world-destroying bombs that H.G. Wells wrote about. The journalist may have a strong incentive to join the cell, as the stray bullet he believed killed his father years ago was supposedly a Hitler-sanctioned assassination. Drake hasn’t been part of the group for long when fellow member Sondra Speier voices her suspicion of a traitor in Black Orchestra. This makes its missions doubly unnerving, including the bold plan to take out Hitler with an explosive. As the years pass and with the world at war, Drake and the others face such threats as the ever present Gestapo and even the Royal Air Force’s bombing of Berlin in the ’40s. Black Orchestra has little time before the Nazis drop their A-bomb on a major city and create unspeakable destruction. Burnham’s bracing story hits the ground running, as Drake pushes through riot-filled streets while Nazi storm troopers attack and grab Jewish citizens. The pace rarely lets up, covering several years and multiple narrative perspectives from real-world figures such as Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Nazi nuclear physicist Kurt Diebner. The equally swift romance between Drake and Sondra, meanwhile, hardly registers with all that’s happening. Nevertheless, they are laudable characters, like most of the Black Orchestra fighters. Sadly, not every valiant member of the group makes it to the end. The author deftly paints a picture of an unforgettably ominous, war-torn Germany: “The air inside the Bürgerbräukeller was heavy with the fog of cigarette and cigar smoke. The walls echoed the clamor of voices from middle-aged Nazi Party members, most of them outfitted in military uniforms.”

An exhilarating war tale that will please genre fans and history buffs alike.