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Summary
Summary
The new supernatural thriller from F. R. Tallis, who takes his readers under the wartime seas of the stormy North Atlantic in 1942, where not all those on board are invited . . .
A German submarine, U-330, patrols the stormy inhospitable waters of the North Atlantic. It is commanded by Siegfried Lorenz, a maverick SS officer who does not believe in the war he is bound by duty and honor to fight in.
U-330 receives a triple-encoded message with instructions to collect two prisoners from a vessel located off the Icelandic coast and transport them to the base at Brest--and a British submarine commander, Sutherland, and a Norwegian academic, Professor Bjørnar Grimstad, are taken on board. Contact between the prisoners and Lorenz has been forbidden, and it transpires that this special mission has been ordered by an unknown source, high up in the SS. It is rumored that Grimstad is working on a secret weapon that could change the course of the war . . .
Then, Sutherland goes rogue, and a series of shocking, brutal events occur. In the aftermath, disturbing things start happening on the boat. It seems that a lethal, supernatural force is stalking the crew, wrestling with Lorenz for control. A thousand feet under the dark, icy waves, it doesn't matter how loud you scream...
Author Notes
F. R. Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist. Between 1999 and 2012, he received or was nominated for numerous awards, including the New London Writers' Award, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Elle Prix de Letrice, the Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Award, and two Edgar Allan Poe Awards. He is the author of The Sleep Room , The Forbidden , The Voices , and The Passenger , all available from Pegasus Crime. He lives in London.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The claustrophobic confines of a German submarine provide the setting for this less than successful supernatural thriller from Tallis (The Voices). Somewhere in the North Atlantic during WWII, Kapitänleutnant Siegfried Lorenz, the commander of U-330, surfaces his vessel amid some ice floes. He and his crew witness an eerie sight-a raft with two corpses, one frozen upright, their features eaten away by gulls. Meanwhile, the SS orders Lorenz to Iceland to take custody of two prisoners: a British naval officer, Lt. Cmdr. Lawrence Sutherland, and a Norwegian academic, Bjornar Grimstad. They succeed in getting the two men aboard, but en route to Brest the Englishman somehow gets hold of a gun and takes both his life and that of his fellow captive. After the bloodshed, Lorenz, a dutiful officer in the tradition of Das Boot, finds himself haunted by visions of the dead. After the intriguing premise, the book falls short, with genuine scares few and far between. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates (U.K.). (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A German submarine is mysteriously invaded by paranormal forces. In the early days of the second world war, German U-boat commander Siegfried Lorenz dreams of Paris as he patrols the North Sea near Iceland. Garbled messages instruct him to meet an old cargo ship stranded nearby and pick up two prisoners: a British submarine captain, Lawrence Sutherland, and a Norwegian academic, Bjrnar Grimstad. Sutherland is killed when he pulls a gun on a German crew member, and frail old Dr. Grimstad is found dead on a bunk, shot in the heart. A weird ocean disturbance that threatens the ship is followed by the discovery of a dozen men in a lifeboat in great physical distress, gaunt and nearly bald and lacking eyebrows. Engagement in a naval skirmish prevents an immediate follow-up with these apparent refugees. Later, Lorenz and his crew find themselves unsettled both by the eerie demeanor of these ghostlike figures and by a series of strange events that befall their ship. The chief electrician inexplicably goes overboard and dies; weird shadows appear on the horizon. Reaching the coast of Brittany is a relief to all, and after an interview with the Admiralty about his adventure, Lorenz gets his Paris furlough, complete with a romantic fling. But when he returns to the command of U-330, Lorenz and his crew find that even more horror awaits them. Elegant prose stylist Tallis (The Voices, 2014, etc.) evokes both the eerie loneliness of life aboard a submarine and the pernicious creep of paranormal forces. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Is it a WWII submarine story? Is it a horror story? Tallis wants us to work that out for ourselves. Structurally, it reads like a submarine story: in the early 1940s, the crew of a German U-boat is tasked with taking a couple of prisoners of war from Iceland to Germany. Along the way, one of the prisoners appears to lose his mind, killing the other prisoner and then himself. The U-boat is then sent on a series of missions, but strange, unexplainable things keep happening. Could these events be connected to the prisoners of war, and by extension to rumors of a secret weapon being developed by the German war machine? Fans of the German novel (and, later, movie) Das Boot will particularly enjoy this book's almost palpable feelings of claustrophobia and impending disaster, and readers of WWII fiction will appreciate the level of detail the author brings to the story. Horror fans might feel a bit cheated the scary bits are subdued, hidden almost behind the scenes, more atmosphere than in-your-face terror but maybe this isn't supposed to be a horror novel at all. Readers will be the judge, but whatever it is, it succeeds brilliantly.--Pitt, David Copyright 2015 Booklist