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Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fifty-eight years old, with a wooden leg and recently recovered from a heart attack, naval intelligence officer Frank Kemper is dispatched, in December 1944, on what seems to be a routine detail. He goes to Richmond, Vermont, near the Canadian border, to confirm the suicide of Leonard Baskins. Ostensibly a paint salesman, Baskins was a courier for the Abwerh. In Richmond, Kemper learns that cold-hearted banker Morrison Menard and schoolteacher Dorcas Baldwin, keeping a clandestine assignation, have perished in a boathouse fire. Like Baskins, they, too, were collaborators and likewise inefficient and greedy. All three, it turns out, are the victims of Paul Steicher, an SS agent whose mission is to assassinate Winston Churchill when he passes through Richmond aboard a train on his way to confer with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though would-be Churchill assassinations are virtually a genre, this first novel is distinguished by rich characterization and a narrative that skillfully leaps from Steicher to Kemper and never lags. The dialogue is also first rate. (December 15) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Nazis in New England menace Winston Churchill on one of his visits to Franklin Roosevelt in this bleak but satisfying WW II debut thriller. It's the beginning of World War for America, but Frank Kemper?? at the end of his career. He's spent his adult life in Europe keeping an eye on things for the US Office of Naval Intelligence, and he's worn out. At 58, the survivor of a massive heart attack and a broken marriage, limping around on a wooden leg, Kemper is ordered to work for an obnoxious young FBI bully in an effort to clean out a pack of German saboteurs and spies in Vermont. It's all Kemper can do to make himself endure the Christmas holiday alone on the icy shores of Lake Champlain, but he finds himself more and more intrigued with the rocketing death rate among known German sympathizers in the area. Crypto-fascists are flying off speeding trains, burning up in boathouses, and succumbing to poisoned needles, and to Kemper's trained eye it's the work of the S.S. And Kemper's right. An S.S. assassin is busy rubbing out the old Abwehr spy network and setting up an attempt on the life of the British Prime Minister. But as Kemper narrows in on the agent, he trips over small-town and FBI politics so often and so rudely that he's pulled from the case just as Churchill's train is ready to roll through town. Rich wartime atmosphere, an unusual setting, and the broken but believable Frank Kemper lift this one above the pack of Nazis-afield adventures. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, British Prime Minister Churchill traveled down the American East Coast by train to meet with President Roosevelt in Washington. Utilizing this piece of history, W. J. Chaput weaves a tense and believable spy tale. Streicher, an SS ``sleeper,'' is activated in a small town in Vermont. His mission is to board the train and kill Churchill. Frank Kemper is the naval intelligence officer who stumbles onto the plot while investigating the death of a German courier. The two cases seem unrelated, but, as Kemper digs deeper, he uncovers a secret organization of German sympathizers who lead him to the SS assassin. Kemper and Streicher race to intercept Churchill's train, Streicher pausing to leave a trail of corpses. Both men also pause to fall in love with the same woman. A suspenseful debut. PLR. [OCLC] 86-13702