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Summary
Summary
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Penn Cage series comes a gripping World War II thriller that "vaporizes almost every cliché about the limits of the genre...[it's] good enough to read twice"( Kirkus Reviews ).
It is January 1944--and as Allied troops prepare for D-Day, Nazi scientists develop a toxic nerve gas that will repel and wipe out any invasion force. To salvage the planned assault, two vastly different but equally determined men are sent to infiltrate the secret concentration camp where the poison gas is being perfected on human subjects. Their only objective: destroy all traces of the gas and the men who created it--no matter how many lives may be lost...including their own.
Author Notes
Bestselling novelist Greg Iles was born in 1960 in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father was in charge of the medical clinic at the U.S. Embassy. He grew up in Natchez, Mississippi and graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. Iles founded the band Frankly Scarlet and played music for a living for a few years before deciding to write. He belongs to the author rock band known as The Rock Bottom Remainders.
Iles's second novel, Black Cross, was awarded the Mississippi Author's Award for Fiction in 1995. His trilogy about Natchez, Mississippi (entitled the Penn Cage Series), made the New York Times bestseller list in 2014 with the first book, Natchez Burning. He made the list again in 2015 with his title The Bone Tree.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Iles's WWII thriller portrays a commando raid on a Nazi concentration camp that is developing poison gases to be used against the Allied forces. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Iles (Spandau Phoenix, 1993) delivers a swift historical thriller of such brutal accomplishment that it vaporizes almost every cliché about the limits of the genre. It's 1944, and American pacifist Dr. Mark McConnell is recruited from his Oxford chemistry lab by a cagey Scotsman, Brigadier Duff Smith, to undertake a potential suicide mission into Nazi Germany. The Reich possesses horrifying weapons that the Allies suspect Hitler will use against their D-Day invasion forces: Sarin and Soman, nerve gases of unprecedented deadliness. Forbidden from assigning Brits to the mission, but with Churchill's secret blessing, Brigadier Smith pairs McConnell with Jonas Stern, a militant Zionist of German descent, and ships the reluctant duo off to the Scottish Highlands for a crash course in commando skills before parachuting them into Germany. The objective: Release an Allied version of Sarin, code named ``Black Cross,'' on Totenhausen, the very death camp that serves as the Nazi's crucible for further gas research--a camp where Jews are the subjects for the grisly experiments of the sadistic pederast Dr. Klaus Brandt. If the plan succeeds, Hitler will be deterred from deploying his gases on the Normandy beaches. But there's a catch: No one gets out alive (even though Smith has arranged a submarine escape, he expects his operatives to perish with everyone else). That outcome fails to captivate either McConnell or Stern, and it is their decision to tinker with strategy, and the consequent improvisations, that pumps the story so full of runaway-train excitement. Stumbling across ardent co-conspirators and enemy sickos at almost every turn (from a friendly German nurse to a deludedly romantic Nazi major), McConnell learns to kill, terrorist Stern acquires an awkward compassion, and both men take a harrowing wartime ride straight to the century's moral heart of darkness. With time as, alternately, ally and adversary, the good guys struggle to deal their crippling blow to the Nazi war machine. Good enough to read twice. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
/*STARRED REVIEW*/ This stunning, horrifying, mesmerizing novel will keep readers transfixed from beginning to end. Iles' latest book tells the story of a physician from Georgia and a German Jew who manage to forestall Hitler's use of poison nerve gas during World War II by destroying a secret laboratory hidden in a Nazi death camp. The rash plan for infiltrating the camp and destroying the laboratory has been developed by the Allies and led by Winston Churchill and will require nerves of steel, physical and emotional stamina, unparalleled bravery, and incredible luck. If it works, millions of lives will be saved. But there is a horrible price to pay for the larger victory--hundreds of Jewish prisoners interred in the camp may also die. From the very first page, lles takes his readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride, juxtaposing tension-filled action scenes, horrifying depictions of savage cruelty, and heart-stopping descriptions of sacrifice and bravery. A remarkable story from a remarkable writer, this one deserves the acclaim it's certain to receive. (Reviewed November 1, 1994)052593829XEmily Melton
Library Journal Review
After Dr. Mark (Mac) McConnell dies, his grandson discovers the American pacifist had served the war effort 50 years ago: D-Day is imminent when British Prime Minister Churchill learns that the Nazis have a ``Black Cross'' class of deadly nerve gases. The British coerce Mac, then a defensive chemical warfare researcher at Oxford, into accompanying a battle-hardened Zionist to execute a plan to convince the Germans that the British also have the gas. Mac and his accomplice must penetrate the German concentration camp where the gases are being developed and tested, then destroy the camp with the Allies' own tiny supply of Black Cross gas. Aided by a German nurse, they pull off the improbable plot. Like Iles's previous book, Spandau Phoenix (LJ, 4/15/93), this is graphically violent and fast paced, but it is more tightly written and better focused than that first novel, which was a New York Times best seller in paperback. A tribute to World War II valor and sacrifice, this suspenseful, above average thriller is recommended for popular fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/94.].-V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
