Dead Ground (Spoils of War, 9)
Graham Hurley can be relied upon to write a good thriller. Dead Ground is the ninth of his The Spoils of War novels set during WW2 and the Spanish Civil War. This is not strictly a series but rather a set of stand-alone thrillers in no chronological order.
Hence Dead Ground begins during the first year of the Spanish War (1936) and follows the career of Annie Wrenne, journalist turned nurse turned spy, through to the end of the war in Spain and into WW2, with Hitler angling to draw the now-victorious Franco into the wider conflict.
The plot centres on two events which never happen, the assassination of Heinrich Himmler on a visit to Toledo in 1940, and Hitler’s attack on Gibraltar (Operation Felix). Since Hurley is not into alternative history, this is rather awkward for a thriller, which has to devote itself to explaining how these projects were frustrated.
This is nonetheless a good thriller, mixing real-life and fictional characters, with a powerful sense of place and a complex plot full of double-dealing and Hurley’s trademark violent action, even if most of the blood is spilled in the hospital operating theatre.
