Cleverly worked plot around the mysterious death in a plane crash of the Duke of Kent in 1942, combined with various real figures at the time in UK, USA and Germany. The plot could well have a ring of truth to it. ( )

A tragic accident or was it? The brother of the King is killed in a plane crash on a remote Scottish hillside and Tom Wilde is asked to look into it as a courtesy to FDR, Godfather to the Prince's newborn son. What Tom finds raises more questions than answers and suddenly he is on a chase to find a defector from the Nazi regime hiding in Sweden. The evidence he carries is proof that the Nazis are killing masses of Jews in Poland.
Clements has honed his craft over the years and his books are always a treat. Here Professor Tom Wilde is implausibly caught up in a search for missing German in the Swedish islands, chased by Nazis, and then back in England pursued by several different factions. It's a twisty plot but driven by high excitement and a solid twist of humour. ( )

Rory Clements is fast becoming an author I turn to when I need a page-turning read to relax into. ‘A Prince and a Spy’ is fifth in his Tom Wilde Second World War series and it doesn’t disappoint. Woven into true history of the conflict – the fatal crash in Scotland of the Duke of Kent’s plane, the holocaust – Clements adds real and fictional characters, intrigue and competing spies, to make this an enjoyable read.
When history professor Wilde returns by train home to Cambridge he bumps into a former student. Cazerove seems distracted, distressed, munching on a bag of sweets. Before the train reaches its destination, Cazerove dies of poisoning. So begins a typical Clements thriller – strong characters, true history and a string of unrelated incidents. When the Duke of Kent’s plane crashes on a remote hill in Scotland, the public is told his plane came down in heavy fog when taking off for Iceland on operational duties. In the world of ‘A Prince and a Spy’, the flying boat was returning from a secret diplomatic mission in Sweden where the Duke met his German cousin, a former member of the Nazi party. Wilde, working for the newly-established American secret intelligence service, OSS, is sent to Scotland to sniff around at the crash site and ask questions on behalf of his president. FDR wants to know why the plane crashed, was Prince George at the controls, was it shot down, and how did one person survive?
A keynote of this series is the multi-layering of rival spy agencies in the UK – the British, the Americans – the infiltration of Nazi agents, Soviet agitators and, in this book, a secret society. Clements is excellent at showing history through the eyes of fictional characters, a challenging task, and I particularly liked the Scottish segment with fisherman Jimmy Orde. A continuing thread from book to book is Wilde’s relationship with his partner Lydia, and Philip Eaton, the British spy who first involved Wilde in espionage. Clements twists reality in this book so Wilde doesn’t know who to trust, who to believe, and who is spying on him. So much so that at times, I lost track too.
An excellent weekend read.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ ( )

Two men meet in Stockholm in 1942. They are cousins, Prince George, Duke of Kent and Prince Philipp von Hessen, a close friend of Hitler and a committed Nazi. Although the details of what they discussed was top secret, was Prince Philipp an envoy of Hitler, trying to discover from his cousin whether Britain would be prepared to broker a peace-deal, thus enabling Germany to concentrate its war efforts on the eastern front? Just days later the duke is killed in a plane crash in the far north of Scotland. The official story is that it was an accident caused by poor weather conditions but there are conflicting stories and rumours of sabotage, although these are denied by the British government and the secret services. The Americans and President Roosevelt suspect there is a cover-up so Cambridge professor and spy, American Tom Wilde, who is now working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the newly-formed American intelligence agency, is sent to Scotland to investigate the crash site to try to determine the truth for the President. It soon becomes clear to him that there is indeed a mystery surrounding the circumstances of the crash but, in the face of resistance to his questioning of the official version, he will need to be very determined if he is to uncover the evidence to support his suspicions. What he does eventually discover will have grave consequences, not just for Britain, but for the rest of the world.
This is a very fast-moving story which involves many different sub-plots, mysteries, life and death struggles and double-dealing, all of which lead Tom Wilde into dangerous situations, not just in England but also in continental Europe. These multiple plots ensured that it was never absolutely clear who could be trusted and where their loyalties belonged, resulting in a degree of tension being maintained throughout the story. I don’t want to go into any detail about where his investigations led him because this would risk exposing some of the complex ways in which the apparently disparate storylines develop to form a cohesive whole. However, although the plotting had little of the more subtle labyrinthine quality of say a John le Carré novel, as anyone familiar with Rory Clements’ previous books will know, there is plenty of action and intrigue from beginning to end, providing an entertaining, tension-filled reading experience! I did find that some of the plot developments and outcomes required some suspension of disbelief but I didn’t find this too irritating and so was happy to go along with the roller-coaster of a ride!
However, one thing which did irritate me throughout the story was a will they/won’t they romantic tension between Tom and Harriet, one of the key characters, and the consequent jealous reaction from Tom’s long-time partner, Lydia. Not only did this feel irrelevant to the story, but the nature of the interactions and the all too frequent references to how attractive Harriet was felt both clichéd and rather juvenile!
To finish on a more positive note, one of the things I enjoyed most about this author’s writing is the way in which he so effectively interweaves historical fact into his fictional story-telling. I always learn something new from his novels and they inspire me to do more of my own research to discover even more. The ‘Historical Note’ chapter at the end of his books always make me appreciate the many ways in which he uses his extensive research to drive the narrative and to add an impressive authenticity to it by evoking such a convincing sense of time and place. I also appreciated his explanations about what happened to the real-life characters.
One thread in the story concerns the formalisation in 1942 of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ and there were times when, familiar though I am with this shameful period of history, I found myself in tears as I read about the inhumane way in which so many millions of people of people were treated. I think this is a reflection of the powerfully compassionate way in which the author portrayed their suffering and captured the terror they must have felt when they realised what awaited them.
This is the fifth book in the Tom Wilde series and as I’d read two of the earlier ones, I was familiar with a number of the regular characters who feature in the novels and so was quickly able to understand their past history and the dynamics of their interrelationships. However, I do think that it would be possible to read this latest story as a stand-alone without feeling too frustrated by the characters’ past histories.
As a result of the irritations I felt I did struggle with how to rate this story but the author’s effective use of his research tipped the balance from three to four stars!
With thanks to Readers First and Zaffre for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review ( )