From Publishers Weekly
Cottam's title takes on an ominous double meaning in this unusual debut, when a British firefighter gets caught up in his country's military effort to protect key potential targets during the Blitz. Whisked away from his artillery unit to a clandestine London assignment as the Nazis step up their aerial assault. Jack Finlay is able to secure his assigned buildings, but as he adjusts to the devastated environment, he finds his past put under the microscope. Meanwhile, he meets and falls in love with the beautiful Rebecca Lange, who is the German godchild of his military boss, Major Grey, and the daughter of a famous architect. Finlay is slowly drawn into Grey's murky, secretive world, and he must battle for Rebecca's attention when a brawling Irishman from her past surfaces. The riveting firefighting scenes enhance the story in the early going, but the intensity fades a bit when the focus shifts to subplots involving Rebecca as well as Grey's mysterious past. The dark, insular tone of the novel and Cottam's terse prose add to the sense of menace as the Nazis tighten their noose around London, and Finlay's anxiety increases significantly when his mother is endangered as the bombing spreads to Liverpool and he learns of his brother's death during a submarine attack. Overplotting keeps this novel from achieving its full potential, but the combination of harrowing atmosphere and compelling action scenes suggests that readers should expect good things from Cottam down the line.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
At the peak of the London blitz, Jack Finlay is summoned from the African front to join an obscure British intelligence unit. Overlooking his somewhat shady past, the group has tapped Jack for his expertise as a fearless fire fighter. His assignments are to guard five strategically located buildings in the heart of London and respond with everything he can muster should any one of them fall prey to Hitler's nightly onslaughts. His quarters are in an underground bunker, where he waits each night for a solitary phone to ring as bombs explode above him. It's a strange life, but stranger still are his brethren, one of whom Jack believes to be a German spy. But he's a novice at this intelligence game and is fearful of tipping his hand to any of his colleagues. So he tends his buildings by day and drinks whatever he can find as he waits for the phone to ring at night. Needing a bit of normalcy, he falls in love with the curator of one of his buildings, only to find that she is the daughter of its eccentric German architect. Is she also a spy? The characters are a bit thin, but this debut novel by London journalist Cottam blends a very sharp sense of the chaos of the London blitz with the tender emotions of a people trying desperately to cling to the comfortable monotony of everyday life. Another addition to the recent wave of novels (e.g., Andrew Grieg's The Clouds Above) looking back at the horror of World War II from the new millennium, it is recommended for special fiction collections on that conflict and larger fiction collections. Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
