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by Elizabeth Wilson
Summer, 1951. Two suspected spies, Burgess and Maclean, have disappeared, and the nation is obsessed with their whereabouts.
Speculation is at fever pitch when Colin Harris, a member of the Communist Party who has been in Germany for several years, turns up to see his old friends Dinah and Alan Wentworth. He has news: he has fallen in love with a girl in East Berlin, and is coming home - with her - for good. Meanwhile, Jack McGovern, who sometimes feels like the only decent man in Special Branch, has a rendezvous with a real spy. Miles Kingdom thinks there's a mole at MI5, and he wants McGovern's help.
A novel about secrets, betrayal, and unearthing the truth, The Girl in Berlin is a reminder that when nothing is as it seems, no one can be trusted - even those you think you know best.
"Starred Review. British author Wilson masterfully uses misdirection and distraction in this clever tale of espionage and morality, a marked improvement over her two earlier post-WWII novels." - Publishers Weekly
"This is a clever, well-written, and carefully plotted novel in which class, hypocrisy, moral corruption, treachery, and taboos ancient and modern are cunningly interwoven." - The Times (UK)
"The picture of an earlier era of austerity Britain has a confident sweep and truthfulness that establishes The Girl in Berlin as something rather special in the espionage genre." - Independent (UK)
This information about The Girl in Berlin was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
An independent researcher and writer best known for her commentaries on feminism and popular culture, Elizabeth Wilson is currently Visiting Professor at the London College of Fashion. She is the author of several non-fiction books, and the novels The Twilight Hour and War Damage.
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