Whatever the Cost

It’s August 1939 in Edgar finalist Kurland’s suspenseful sequel to 2020’s The Bells of Hell, and Winston Churchill meets with Lord Geoffrey Saboy to discuss the imminent war with Germany. Geoffrey goes to Paris as a cultural attaché with his wife, Lady Patricia, though their real work is spying for the British government. Their happy marriage of convenience—Saboy is gay, and Patricia, who has “large and varied sexual appetites,” pursues her own affairs—adds spice to the plot. In Germany, physics professor Josef Brun is on the run from the Nazis, guarding documents relating to secret experiments with radioactivity. In the U.S., President Roosevelt receives a letter from Albert Einstein alerting him to the possibility of making a superweapon with uranium ore. FDR sends his top spy, Office of Special Intelligence agent Jacob Welker, to Europe to spirit away a group of scientists and bring them to America. Kurland expertly weaves Saboy’s sometimes madcap antics into Welker’s serious work without betraying the rules of a good espionage novel. Readers will eagerly await the next in the series. [em]Agent: Kimberley Cameron, Kimberley Cameron & Assoc. (Apr.) [/em]