A review by kurtwombat
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre

4.0

Contemplating the stirs and eddies of history, it's easy to assume inevitable the currents that carried events one way or another. That Hitler's reach exceeded his grasp seems obvious now but had he been afforded a little more time, advancements in his nuclear program and the implementation of his V-2 rockets might have dramatically changed the course of things. Time is largely why the D-Day landing at Normandy became the hinge upon which the history of the 20th century swung. Should it have failed, the Allied cause might have been stalled for years. Among the many factors that contributed to the ultimate success of the landings was the use of spies to pepper the German intelligence command with half-truths and outright deceit. Virtually every spy the Germans sent to England was either killed, captured or turned. It is those who were turned who are the focus Ben Macintyre's DOUBLE CROSS a very well done real life spy thriller that I enjoyed more for the spies than the thrills. The origins, motivations and dubious characters of the central group of spies is all unfolded quite well and captivated me for the first half of the book. Each uniquely skilled and monstrously flawed double agent was so self absorbed that the thought of actually being caught was unimaginable. Recreated here with a deft hand for detail, I was quite often surprised by the turns each spy's life took. The book balances the stories of the spies with their British MI5 handlers who on good days had to satisfy diva spies and on bad days had to worry about being triple crossed and all their work vanishing in a sudden flash. As much as I enjoyed the first half of the book, there is a significant portion just past midway where the book seems to be treading water--as if the author were determined to get every bit of research into the book at the expense of momentum. The pace picks up again once the D-Day landing is underway and all the double agent's efforts are aimed in the same direction. As with any spy story, it is often difficult to directly link cause A with effect B, which does make some of the payoff from the spies activities a tad tepid, but generally there seems to be enough justification to credit the double agents with at least making the D-Day landing easier and possibly with making the landing possible at all.