You are a secret agent working for the British in Berlin. You are due to go home on leave, but you are being followed by the enemy–or your own people. A man meets you in the theater and briefs you on a plot to revive the power of Nazi Germany. You do not believe him, but you remember that one of the suspects mentioned was a senior SS officer you met while you were working as a spy in Nazi Germany. Next you make contact with a beautiful girl who may know something. Someone tries to kill both of you. Your name is Quiller. You are the hero of an extraordinary novel that shows how a spy works, how messages are coded and decoded, how contacts are made, how a man reacts under the influence of truth drugs, and that traces the story of a vastly complex, entertaining, convincing, and sinister plot.

I purchased a copy of this book for my own reading.

The next stop on my alphabet reading challenge was Q. This was going to be a tough one, or so I thought, but came across this post-war spy thriller set in Berlin and I thought this sounded right up my street. As it turns out, this is the American title and the British title is The Berlin Memorandum. Normally I despise titles changed for different markets (I’m looking at you, Potter!) but this time, it did me a favour.

I’ve always been a fan of history, and having studied it at school, the Second World War period featured heavily, so a thriller set in post-war Berlin spoke to me. With Hitler dead and the Third Reich defeated, Europe could breathe easy. At least, that’s what society thought. But European secret services were monitoring a growing possibility that ex-NAZI party officials had found themselves in positions of power in the new German order.

Agent Quiller finds himself embroiled in a plot to resurrect the Reich and sow chaos in the post-war calm. He must uncover the most senior conspirators, the nature of their plot and stop it before it can be enacted and before they can get to him first. It’s a pacey, action-packed espionage thriller set against an undercurrent of suspicion in a time of fractious peace. It made for a fantastic, quick read and I was all too happy to discover it was only the first book in what seems to be quite an extensive series.

My rating: