From Publishers Weekly
First published in the U.K. in 1972 under the title
The Judas Mandate, Egleton's third alternative history set in a Soviet-occupied Britain blends, like its predecessors (
Never Surrender and
The Sleeper), tough-nosed realism with a poetic sense of tragic loss. When the Russians decide to pull out and leave a gang of British lackeys to run the country, series hero and resistance fighter David Garnett must get six anti-Soviet politicians trying to form a government-in-exile to safety. Egleton, who has shown in his many thrillers that he knows what goes on behind closed cabinet-room doors, brings this unlikely scenario to life with great skill and ironic understatement. Fans of Len Deighton's
SS/GB and the film
It Happened Here, both of which are set in an England occupied by Nazi Germany, will be especially pleased.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Fans of Egleton's David Garnett espionage thriller series will be delighted with this latest entry. In the series' alternate history, England is still occupied by Russia, but the Russians are shortly to withdraw, leaving the country to form a new government. The Resistance Movement once again calls on the considerable skills of Garnett to counteract the hawkish elements in power and prevent them from a potentially deadly government takeover. All David has to do, according to his controller, Vickers, is to kidnap six high-level political prisoners from a prison convoy, hide them away until the furor dies down, and then smuggle them via cargo ship to the U.S., where they will set up a government in exile with the help of the sympathetic Americans. The carrot that Vickers holds out is that Garnett and his lover/co-spy, Valerie Dane, can be aboard the boat, thus escaping the considerable dangers that being on the British most-wanted list brings. A knuckle-whitening ending makes for edge-of-the-seat reading for espionage fans.
Emily MeltonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
