Riptide - John Lawton

John Lawton, whose first three novels featuring rising police detective Frederick Troy, set against real events (London in the run-up to D-Day in 1944, Khruschev and Bulganin's visit to Britain in 1956 and the Profumo affair of 1963 that helped bring down the Tory government), earned him critical acclaim, returns to WWII and three years before Blackout when Troy was but a Murder Squad Sergeant. It is April 1941 and Hitler is getting ready to invade Russia.
In Berlin an Abwehr officer, Wolfgang Stahl fakes his death ? he has been spying for the British - and flees to England before he is unmasked. In Scotland a plane lands carrying Rudolf Hess, Hitler?s deputy, who is on a mission to negotiate peace. From Washington America, although not yet officially in the war, sends an intelligence officer to London to find out what?s going on. In London Special Branch finds itself on the trail of Nazi assassins despatched to eliminate Stahl before he can spill all he knows about the German military plans for its Russian campaign. And when Walter Stilton, the Special Branch detective, is himself murdered, young Frederick Troy is given his chance.
As ever with Lawton?s fiction the backdrop is real life and history. His chief inspector loses two sons when HMS Hood is sunk by the German battleship Bismarck, living through the blitz is chillingly described. The heroine is Stilton?s daughter, a rampantly sexual red-head wpc. Lawton's new Troy novel also brings the welcome reappearance of Kolanciewicz, Scotland Yard's eccentric pathologist, and for those who already are her fans the first, if brief appearance of wise-cracking Larissa,, as yet only an extremely minor player in the Washington military.