A Dangerous Game
Mandy Robotham
Harper Collins Publishers
Mandy Robotham has written historical thrillers set in the years of World War 2, and with A Dangerous Game, she moves into the 1950s, when Germany and Britain were struggling to recover from the deprivations and damage of the war years and to deal with new threats.
Her two central characters, London policewoman “Dexie” Dexter and German cop Harri Schroder, have tragic back stories from the war which will slowly be revealed to the reader. They meet when Harri is seconded to the metropolitan police in London from his usual policing in Hamburg for a special operation and is paired with Dexie. Harri has been sent for because the Met are trying to establish the real identity of a successful British businessman who is suspected of being a Nazi war criminal who has reinvented himself, and Harri knew him in the bad old days.
If the businessman really is Helmut Praxer, he has had plastic surgery to disguise himself and anyway is lying low. Briefed by a senior policeman and a mysterious Mr Johnson, who seems to be from MI6, Harri and Dexie set off to find him on an urgent deadline. If he is not identified and stopped, he is set to sign an important deal which will go against British interests. But someone seems to be briefing against Harri and Dexie.
There is another enemy: the famous London smog of December 1952 which shut down the city for almost a week and claimed an estimated 12,000 lives. Dexie and Harri are as trapped as everyone else, and time is running out. Inevitably, the two are increasingly drawn to each other, two damaged people with a common purpose.
The descriptions of the smog are compelling and atmospheric, but some of the plotting does seem a little perfunctory, and one or two of the events stretch credibility a long way. Praxer is an almost cartoonish baddie, and there could be a more convincing description of how he turned himself into an apparently above-board Brit. Sure, plenty of high-up Nazis escaped via ratlines and often the former allies turned a blind eye, newly preoccupied with the Cold War. More about this would have fleshed out the novel. However it is a lively thriller spiced up with romance.
Mandy Robotham chases a suspected Nazi in smog-filled London in a lively thriller
A Dangerous Game
Mandy Robotham
Harper Collins Publishers
Mandy Robotham has written historical thrillers set in the years of World War 2, and with A Dangerous Game, she moves into the 1950s, when Germany and Britain were struggling to recover from the deprivations and damage of the war years and to deal with new threats.
Her two central characters, London policewoman “Dexie” Dexter and German cop Harri Schroder, have tragic back stories from the war which will slowly be revealed to the reader. They meet when Harri is seconded to the metropolitan police in London from his usual policing in Hamburg for a special operation and is paired with Dexie. Harri has been sent for because the Met are trying to establish the real identity of a successful British businessman who is suspected of being a Nazi war criminal who has reinvented himself, and Harri knew him in the bad old days.
If the businessman really is Helmut Praxer, he has had plastic surgery to disguise himself and anyway is lying low. Briefed by a senior policeman and a mysterious Mr Johnson, who seems to be from MI6, Harri and Dexie set off to find him on an urgent deadline. If he is not identified and stopped, he is set to sign an important deal which will go against British interests. But someone seems to be briefing against Harri and Dexie.
There is another enemy: the famous London smog of December 1952 which shut down the city for almost a week and claimed an estimated 12,000 lives. Dexie and Harri are as trapped as everyone else, and time is running out. Inevitably, the two are increasingly drawn to each other, two damaged people with a common purpose.
The descriptions of the smog are compelling and atmospheric, but some of the plotting does seem a little perfunctory, and one or two of the events stretch credibility a long way. Praxer is an almost cartoonish baddie, and there could be a more convincing description of how he turned himself into an apparently above-board Brit. Sure, plenty of high-up Nazis escaped via ratlines and often the former allies turned a blind eye, newly preoccupied with the Cold War. More about this would have fleshed out the novel. However it is a lively thriller spiced up with romance.
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