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A review by tonstantweader
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing
3.0
“Dead man on leave” is another name for an undercover Soviet spy. They don’t expect to live long lives as they live at risk of exposure at any moment. Josef Hofmann was such a man. Born in Germany, he was a fervent communist who was recruited as a spy years earlier and worked undercover in North and South America before returning to Germany as the Nazis were consolidating power. He moves into a boarding house and slowly into the lives of the family, drawn in by the intelligence and admiration of the youngest son, Walter. He keeps a hidden diary, one that won’t be found until the late 80s, a Diary of a Dead Man on Leave.
He is at work at a trainyard looking for recruits and old connections, trying to identify who would be safe to form a cadre to carry out sabotage or terroristic attacks to weaken the Nazi military effort. While doing that, he is also helping with homework and family issues, falling in love, not with a woman, but with being part of a family of people he cares about and who care about him.
David Downing is one of my favorite writers of World War II espionage. I loved the John Russell series. Diary of a Dead Man on Leave covers some of the same ground, but from a different perspective. It is, despite it being all about spying, less of an espionage story and more of a love story, though not a romance. This is the story of a man who comes to love a family, who feels a fatherly love for young Walter. The real conflict is between Josef’s work as a spy and his role in the family. I might have liked this book better without the contemporary epilogue that catches us up on what happened. It could have ended at the end of the final chapter back in the past. That would have been dramatic and we would have assumed the end anyway. The epilogue adds nothing we would not have inferred. Because it is exactly what we expected, it is anticlimactic and deflating.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave will be released April 2nd. I received an e-galley for review from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave at Soho Crime
David Downing author site
★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/03/27/9781616958435/
He is at work at a trainyard looking for recruits and old connections, trying to identify who would be safe to form a cadre to carry out sabotage or terroristic attacks to weaken the Nazi military effort. While doing that, he is also helping with homework and family issues, falling in love, not with a woman, but with being part of a family of people he cares about and who care about him.
David Downing is one of my favorite writers of World War II espionage. I loved the John Russell series. Diary of a Dead Man on Leave covers some of the same ground, but from a different perspective. It is, despite it being all about spying, less of an espionage story and more of a love story, though not a romance. This is the story of a man who comes to love a family, who feels a fatherly love for young Walter. The real conflict is between Josef’s work as a spy and his role in the family. I might have liked this book better without the contemporary epilogue that catches us up on what happened. It could have ended at the end of the final chapter back in the past. That would have been dramatic and we would have assumed the end anyway. The epilogue adds nothing we would not have inferred. Because it is exactly what we expected, it is anticlimactic and deflating.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave will be released April 2nd. I received an e-galley for review from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave at Soho Crime
David Downing author site
★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/03/27/9781616958435/