Tom Wilde

In a great English house, a young woman offers herself to one of the most powerful and influential figures in the land - but this is no ordinary seduction. She plans to ensure his death.... On holiday in France, Professor Tom Wilde discovers his brilliant student Marcus Marfield, who disappeared two years earlier to join the International Brigades in Spain, in the Le Vernet concentration camp in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Wilde secures his release just as German tanks roll into Poland. Meanwhile, a U-boat sinks the liner Athenia in the Atlantic with many casualties....

The most anticipated spy thriller of 2020, from the Sunday Times best-selling author of Corpus. Autumn 1941. The war is going badly for Britain and its allies. If Hitler is to be stopped, a new weapon is desperately needed. In Cambridge, professor Tom Wilde is approached by an American intelligence officer who claims to know of such a weapon - one so secret even Hitler himself isn't aware of its existence. If Wilde can smuggle the package out of Germany, the Third Reich will surely fall.

Sweden, 1942—Two old friends meet. They are cousins. One is Prince George, Duke of Kent, brother of the King of England. The other is Prince Philipp von Hessen, a committed Nazi and close friend of Adolf Hitler. Days later, the Prince George is killed in a plane crash in the north of Scotland. The official story is that it was an accident—but not everyone is convinced. There is even a suggestion that the Duke's plane was sabotaged, but with no evidence, Cambridge spy Tom Wilde is sent north to discover the truth . . .

Germany, late summer 1945. The war is over, but the country is in ruins. Millions of refugees and holocaust survivors strive to rebuild their lives in displaced persons camps. Millions of German soldiers and SS men are held captive in primitive conditions in open-air detention centres. Everywhere, civilians are desperate for food and shelter. No one admits to having voted Nazi, yet many are unrepentant. Adolf Hitler is said to have killed himself in his Berlin bunker. But no body was found - and many people believe he is alive.

Autumn 1945 - Off the east coast of England, a Japanese sub surfaces, unloads its mysterious cargo, then blows itself to pieces. Former spy Professor Tom Wilde is enjoying peacetime in Cambridge, settling back into teaching and family life. Until a call from senior MI5 boss Lord Templeman brings him out of retirement. A nearby village has been locked down by the military, its residents blighted by a deadly illness. No one is allowed in or out. There are rumours the Nazi machine is still operational, with links to Unit 731, a notorious Japanese biological warfare research laboratory.

England is deep in the coldest winter anyone can remember. It snows every day, temperatures do not rise above freezing for seven weeks, coal cannot get from the pitheads to the power stations, food and fuel are in desperately short supply. More than that, the country's secret services have been penetrated, which means Britain is more vulnerable than ever. And Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of 'Special Tasks' to create a little extra chaos.