The Blitz Secret (John Cook Thriller)
This is certainly not a feel-good story about the London Blitz. Ronson gives us the Blitz in all its horror and squalor, not sparing the stench of stale sweat and overflowing urine buckets in the public shelters and back-garden Andersens while they danced and drank the night away in the West End night clubs. And everybody is a villain – prostitutes, racketeers, looters, would-be spies, and at least one serial killer.
The hero is ex-soldier and super-patriot John Cook, whom I think we are meant to admire, but who seems more like a pathological killer with a preference for killing with his bare hands – but only the bad guys of course.
John gets involved in tracing a missing woman, the sister of an evacuee billeted on his Sussex farm. The girl is from the London Docklands, which gives John the occasion to visit the area on the day of the great fire-bomb raid in September 1940. It is vividly described, even though the author obviously was not there. I was there, and I can vouch that the sky really did turn scarlet.
There is a subplot concerning John’s girlfriend, Lady Margaret, who is a double agent for MI5. I found this less credible and not essential to the main story. The main story is a fast-moving, very violent thriller. It is well researched but, please, purpose-built shelters in brick or steel never had conventional doors (although many were fitted with them after the war) but had open apertures shielded by free-standing blast walls. Bomb blast jammed doors, potentially trapping the shelterers.
