Blitzkrieg

This immersive, high-stakes WWII spy novel centers protagonist Joseph “Katipo” St. George, a 12-year-old child of diplomat parents—a British father and New Zealander mother. In 1938 Berlin, Joe is familiar with the displays of the Hitler Youth (his best friend’s uncle is one of Hitler’s top aides) and encounters antisemitic violence. After the Gestapo takes his father, Joe’s mother facilitates escape for herself and for Joe, giving her son an assumed identity—and suggesting that there’s more to his parents than he previously realized. Joe is sent to safety on a New Zealand farm but stows away on a naval ship to London, depicted in a rousing 1941-set segment. There, the mystery around his mother’s London whereabouts leads to life alongside “Blitz rat” children and covert operations of his own. Falkner (The Project) intersperses plot-driven third-person chapters with first-person excerpts from the fictional protagonist’s memoirs. Though complications sometimes bog down the pacing en route to a cliffhanger ending, it’s a historically grounded novel of intrigue alongside familial and personal change. Protagonists cue as white. Ages 12–up. (Jan.)