Publisher's Weekly Review
It's the spring of 1946 in bestseller Griffin and son Butterworth's tight fifth Clandestine Operations novel (after 2017's Death at Nuremberg), and two top SS leaders, Franz von Dietelburg and Wilhelm Burgdorf, have been imprisoned for a wide variety of crimes, among them the massacre of slave laborers at PeenemA¼nde, the site of the German rocket laboratories during WWII. Dietelburg and Burgdorf are also suspected of being involved in Odessa, a secret organization of former SS personnel whose mission is smuggling Nazis out of Germany. After the duo escapes, the job of hunting them down falls to Capt. Jim Cronley, an agent in the Directorate of Central Intelligence, the successor to the Office of Strategic Services. Cronley flies from Argentina to Nuremberg with a large contingent of helpers to pursue the escaped Nazis. They also get on the trail of a fortune stashed away by Heinrich Himmler in the hope of financing a Fourth Reich. Newcomers will find this a good entry point, and regular readers will be pleased that the authors have avoided the long-winded prose that's marred recent entries in the series. Agent: Robert Youdelman, Rember & Curtis. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The title of the fifth in the authors' Clandestine Operations series is the beginning of a famous proverb that concludes with: . . . is my friend. That, in a nutshell, pretty much sums up the thrust of the novel, which takes places in the first half of 1946. It follows on the heels of 2017's Death at Nuremberg and opens with a punch to the gut: the two Nazi war criminals whom Special Agent Jim Cronley recently captured have escaped from prison, aided by person(s) unknown. Now Cronley must hunt the Nazis all over again. Does the prison breakout have anything to do with the rumors that Heinrich Himmler, just before war's end, laid plans for Germany to reign supreme in the years to come? How willing is Cronley to join forces with an enemy to defeat a greater foe? It's an interesting, mostly well-told historical adventure, marred by some too-clunky exposition and some bewildering dialogue. Fans of Griffin's dozens of popular military-themed novels (cowritten, of late, with his son) will want to read this one, but it's not likely to bring in new readers.--David Pitt Copyright 2019 Booklist