Bluffing Mr. Churchill - Softcover

Lawton, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143034324 ISBN 13: 9780143034322

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2004

Synopsis

In 1941, the sheltered Calvin M. Cormack teams up with Walter Stilton, a rowdy MI5 officer, to find Wolfgang Stahl, an American spy masquerading as an SS officer, who flees Germany with valuable information on Hitler's plans to invade Russia, but Cormack must enlist the aid of Sergeant Troy of Scotland Yard after his partner turns up dead. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author:

John Lawton is a novelist and occasional historian. He lives high up in the English hills, but spends part of the year in New York City and pretends it is balance.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this stimulating prequel to Lawton's acclaimed Inspector Troy series (Black Out; Old Flames; etc.), London is in the middle of the blitz and 25-year-old Freddie Troy is a Scotland Yard sergeant, chafing at the limits of his post. As the novel begins, he is relegated to the background, the focus instead on a gawky American named Calvin Cormack, who has come to London to help find and debrief Wolfgang Stahl, a top aide to Hitler's SS chief, Heydrich, and a spy for the Americans who has been forced to flee Germany for England to avoid capture, carrying with him plans for the imminent German invasion of Russia. The seriously spooked Stahl disappears into the vast underground system of bombed-out London, accessible only to Walter Stilton, a wonderfully bluff old copper. Calvin (whose father is a U.S. senator working with Charles Lindbergh and the America First group to keep the U.S. out of the war) is quickly absorbed into the large Stilton family, winning the affections of oldest daughter Kitty, also a police officer. Kitty, as it happens, was previously involved with Freddie Troy (and hasn't given him up entirely); Freddie's ties to the family and Calvin become more complicated when tragedy strikes and Freddie is drawn into the search for Stahl. Lawton meshes comedy and suspense with skill and energy, and seamlessly mixes fictional creations with real characters like H.G. Wells, newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, Winston Churchill and distant cousin Robert Churchill (a talented gunsmith who plays a key role here), producing a distinctive, vigorous novel of wartime suspense.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0143034324
• ISBN 13: 9780143034322
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 416