35582904About The Book

The eve of war: a secret so deadly, nothing and no one is safe

June 1939. England is partying like there is no tomorrow, gas masks at the ready. In Cambridge the May Balls are played out with a frantic intensity – but the good times won’t last… In Europe, the Nazis have invaded Czechoslovakia, and in Germany he persecution of the Jews is now so widespread that desperate Jewish parents send their children to safety in Britain aboard the Kinder-transport. Closer to home, the IRA’s S-Plan bombing campaign has resulted in more than 100 terrorist outrages around England.

But perhaps the most far-reaching event of all goes largely unreported: in Germany, Otto Hahn has produced the first man-made fission and an atomic device is now a very real possibility. The Nazis set up the Uranverein group of physicists: its task is to build a super bomb. The German High Command is aware that British and US scientists are working on similar line. Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory is where the atom was split in 1932. Might the Cambridge men now win the race for a nuclear bomb? Hitler’s generals need to be sure they know all the Cavendish’s secrets. Only then will it be safe for Germany to wage war.

When one of the Cavendish’s finest brains is murdered, Professor Tom Wilde is once more drawn into an intrigue from which there seems no escape. In a conspiracy that stretches from Cambridge to Berlin and from Washington DC to the west coast of Ireland, he faces deadly forces that threaten the fate of the world.

My Review

I thoroughly enjoyed Corpus, the first book in the Tom Wilde series set in 1930s Cambridge, and have been waiting for about a year to read this next book. Did it live up to my expectations? Yes and no!

It was great to be back in Cambridge with Tom Wilde, but I must admit that I was rather disappointed that Lydia, his lady friend, and partner in crime, wasn’t involved in his adventures at home. She was featured in the book, just not in a way I was expecting.

Once again there was so much I didn’t know about this particular time in British history. I didn’t realise that the IRA were active on British soil in 1930s, this was a huge surprise to me, as well as being an intriguing storyline.

The main plot was very interesting, as I really didn’t know that their was such a huge race to build an atomic bomb before World War Two, plus I’d only recently heard about the Cavendish Lab. The characters involved in this part of the storyline were perfect, with me not knowing who was bad and what was going to happen next.

As in Corpus, Tom Wilde gets himself into all sorts of tight situations, never knowing if he’s going to get out alive or not, and never too sure who he can trust.

Over all it was a very enjoyable return to Cambridge with my new favourite hero, and I’m already looking forward to the next book in the series.

Thanks so much to Readers First for my copy.