Bluffing Mr. Churchill (The Inspector Troy Novels, 2) - Hardcover

Lawton, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0871139073 ISBN 13: 9780871139078

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003

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. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

John Lawton is a descendant of an Irish-American family that settled in Britain early in the previous century. He has spent much of his adult life rediscovering his lost continent and interpreting it for British television, but is now fairly content to let time and chance bounce him between a hilltop house in the English Pennines and a Manhattan apartment with frequent forays into the Chiricahua Mountains.

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: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0871139073
• ISBN 13: 9780871139078
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336