Prey
The latest book in Hurley’s Spoils of War series featuring MI5 agent and ex-Royal Marine Tam Moncrieff starts in summer 1943 with Moncrieff tasked to interview an aircraft designer working for A.V. Roe, who has been imprisoned for threatening to expose the fact that the RAF’s flagship Avro Lancaster bomber has a fundamental design flaw due to its lack of a ventral (underside) gun turret.
Meanwhile in Germany, Dieter Merz, an officer in the Luftwaffe’s night fighter forces, has been developing a new gun firing upwards to deliberately exploit the Lancasters’ weakness. Merz is a patriotic German but not a Nazi and refuses, defying threats, to join the SS.
Back in England, Moncrieff becomes involved in investigating the suspicious death (friendly fire or worse) of a British soldier who had been a vociferous Communist. The soldier’s young widow is on hand to provide a touch of romance. His investigations, which take him all over home front Britain and include those with mental and physical war wounds, are alternated with military and flying scenes featuring Merz, a distinguished aviator known to have ‘balls of iron’, courted by the Nazi authorities for his propaganda value.
Tough and shrewd with a sensual streak, Moncrieff is given considerable leeway by his MI5 bosses, who have come to respect his work from his previous exploits. Moncrieff himself seems to feel the weight of his own reputation, which prompts an act of near self-sacrifice.
If the plot’s logic (leading to a graphic depiction of the RAF’s disastrous Nuremberg raid in March 1944) seems far-fetched at times, the story is told with psychological insight and a Le Carré-like flair for interesting supporting characters and red herrings. A fine novel taking in both sides of the war, well-researched, full of technical interest, and enjoyably cynical.
