It it 1933. Adolph Hitler is chancellor of Germany but is not yet in complete control of the government. Hitler's greatest rival. SA leader. Ernst Rohm, is ordering the killing of Jews, the burning synagogues and the roughing up of tourists. This leads to an international Jewish boycott of German goods, a movement encouraged by Winston Churchill and the American Rabbi, Abba Hillel Silver. But the boycott is opposed by both the U.S. and British governments along with a Zionist group in Palestine.
Such is the premise for the fifth Winston Churchill thriller novel, The Silver Mosaic by the father and son team of Michael and Patrick McMenamin.
It is possible to comprehend this complex story without reading the prior novels, but new readers may be overwhelmed by the large number of characters popping up in the early chapters. There is an American military secret agent, his Scottish journalist girlfriend, Three Irish assassins, a Jewish Palestinian assassin, various SS and SA thugs, along with historical figures like FDR, Hermann Goring and Reinhard Heydrich.
The book centers on a convoluted plot involving stolen microfilm of German industrial secrets that the boycott proponents want to use to collapse the economy and force Hitler from power.
To say the plot lacks credibility is an understatement. One character survives two kidnappings and four assassination attempts. But the action sequences are well written and the work moves along at such a rapid clip, that you overlook some plot holes. For example, the female journalist has her gun seized and tossed into a river, but near the end of the story, it mysteriously shows up in her purse. There is also a reference to the Guinness Book of World Records, which was not published until 20 years after the novel takes place.
The Silver Mosaic does succeed at portraying the ambiguous relationship between the U.S., the U.K. and Nazi Germany in the early 1930s. Both future allied governments were reluctant to wreck the Germany economy for fear it would damage their own country's recovery from the depression. The novel also tells the little-known story of how Zionist Jews in Palestine cooperated with the Nazis in hopes of getting more German Jews to emigrate to the Holy Land.
As is often the case in these types of thrillers, the characterizations are s two dimensional. Even Churchill doesn't come off as a realistic character. And the dialogue sounds as if it was cribbed from a 1940s film noir script. There are also some graphic, violent torture scenes that may put off some readers.
Nevertheless, I can recommend The Silver Mosaic to those who are interested in World War II, spy novels or escapist fiction. The notes at the end delineate what was historical and what was made up. There is also a helpful list of nonfiction books dealing with the subject of the novel.