I was a little disappointed in this one, based on the cover image being of the Nazi Iron Cross i was expecting them to be the central characters, but it almost entirely took place in Cambridge and had next to no Germans in it at all.
I thought this was going to be about the race for creating the first nuclear weapon, which it was to a certain degree, but only in parallel, the events of the book take place during the initial time period of the nuclear race, but don't really concern it much at all.
This is a book 2 in a series so you miss some of the initial character development, but it does a good enough job of catching you up. Having not read the first book i don't know how much ground it retreads but i didn't feel lost in the story or feel like it had started partway through.
There are 3 distinct strands to this story - the German agents kidnapping a young boy to blackmail his scientist mother into spying for them on the bigwigs in Cambridge; the IRA bombing campaign (of which i never even knew happened around the time of the outbreak of the war); and the murders of some of the greatest minds at the Cavendish which is the research institute at the vanguard of the nuclear discoveries, of which our main hero Professor Wilde is the one trying to sleuth it all out and see how it fits together. I felt it could have done without the IRA strand, it was definitely the weakest of the 3 so felt more like page filler than an integral part of the story.
Overall it was a decent enough page turner, just not quite what i was expecting initially which sort of spoiled it a little for me before the end.
I thought this was going to be about the race for creating the first nuclear weapon, which it was to a certain degree, but only in parallel, the events of the book take place during the initial time period of the nuclear race, but don't really concern it much at all.
This is a book 2 in a series so you miss some of the initial character development, but it does a good enough job of catching you up. Having not read the first book i don't know how much ground it retreads but i didn't feel lost in the story or feel like it had started partway through.
There are 3 distinct strands to this story - the German agents kidnapping a young boy to blackmail his scientist mother into spying for them on the bigwigs in Cambridge; the IRA bombing campaign (of which i never even knew happened around the time of the outbreak of the war); and the murders of some of the greatest minds at the Cavendish which is the research institute at the vanguard of the nuclear discoveries, of which our main hero Professor Wilde is the one trying to sleuth it all out and see how it fits together. I felt it could have done without the IRA strand, it was definitely the weakest of the 3 so felt more like page filler than an integral part of the story.
Overall it was a decent enough page turner, just not quite what i was expecting initially which sort of spoiled it a little for me before the end.