Collaborator [Hardcover]

All the ingredients of a good thriller... An imaginative blend of well-researched fact and well crafted fiction.

An enthralling what-if action adventure in the tradition of FATHERLAND, but set in occupied Britain December 1940 and England lies under German occupation. In the West Country, Nick Penny comes home after four months as a prisoner of war to act as interpreter to the provincial governor. He finds his father dead, his mother crippled, and his best friend Roy heavily involved in a resistance movement. When war hero Matty Cordington returns to run his father's estate, the three friends are re-united in a common purpose. Life under the occupation becomes a compromise at every level. Nick's sister Joan sleeps with a profiteer to find food for her family. There are leaks in the resistance movement, and Matty's girlfriend is fingered and dispatched. The occupation turns nastier as Hitler invades Russia, with less food and greater demands on the civilian population to labour in the Reich. Britain's Jews are first deported, then the 'Final Solution' is enacted on English soil. But treachery still dogs the resistance and, hunted by the Gestapo and the British police, Nick and his girlfriend Angel desperately race to eliminate the real traitor. The story then escalates to an explosive climax at the very centre of occupational power.

Murray Davies is the author of three previous thrillers, THE DRUMBEAT OF JIMMY SANDES, THE SAMSON OPTION and THE DEVIL'S HANDSHAKE (published by Macmillan). He lives in Greenwich and Wiltshire.