An American Spy Story

Ray Covell was a librarian in Kelowna, British Columbia.

David Gurr, born in London, England, served with the Royal Canadian Navy and was a computer analyst, architect, and builder before becoming a writer. He now lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with his wife, children, and pets. His previous novels include Troika (1979), A Woman Called Scylla (1981), and The Action of the Tiger (1984). The “woman called Scylla,” a British secret agent who died in Hitler’s Ravensbruck, was the wife of Major Dexter, who is the hero of this new book. Major Dexter, of the Office of Strategic Services, returns to the United States with his five-year-old daughter Jane, hoping to be left in peace. But General “Wild Bill” Donovan, Head of OSS, visits him in his Maine retreat and tells Dexter that world peace will be at risk if he doesn’t take on one last intelligence task: the Nazis have landed a U-boat in Florida and a team of spies is on its way to sabotage the Manhattan Project — the United States search for the atom bomb. But did the Nazi U-boat photographed by the Navy actually send a team of saboteurs ashore, or is that spy story a cover for another one? Readers who enjoy thrillers will revel in the colorful, behind-the-scenes look at the FBI and the OSS, and the “unwieldy conglomerate of blundering and ingenuity that was the Manhattan Project.” Fact and fiction are intertwined in this story, which is full of action and suspense.