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Diary of a Dead Man on Leave
David Downing
Soho Crime
April 2019
On Sale: April 2, 2019
312 pages ISBN: 161695843X EAN: 9781616958435 Kindle: B07FRZX964 Hardcover / e-Book
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Mystery Historical
From bestselling author David Downing, master of
historical espionage, comes a heart-wrenching depiction of
Germany in the days leading up to World War II and the
difficult choices of one man of
conviction.
In April 1938, a man calling
himself Josef Hofmann arrives at a boarding house in Hamm,
Germany, and lets a room from the widow who owns it. Fifty
years later, Walter Gersdorff, the widow's son, who was
eleven years old in the spring of 1938, discovers the
carefully hidden diary the boarder had kept during his stay,
even though he never should have written any of its contents
down.
What Walter finds is a chronicle of one the
most tumultuous years in German history, narrated by a
secret agent on a deadly mission. Josef Hofmann was not the
returned Argentinian immigrant he'd said he was—he was a
communist spy under Moscow's command trying to reconnect
with remaining members of Germany's suppressed communist
party. Hofmann's bosses believe the common workers are the
only way to stop the German war machine from within. Posing
as a railroad man, Hofmann sets out on his game of "Russian
roulette," approaching Hamm's ex-party members one at a
time and delicately feeling out their allegiances.
He
always knew his mission would most likely end in his death,
and he was satisfied to make that sacrifice for the
revolution if it could help stop Hitler and his abominable
ideology. But as he grows close to the Gersdorffs,
accidentally stepping into the role of the father Walter
never had, Hofmann begins to wish for another kind of hope
in his life.
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