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Tom Wilde Series 4 Books Collection Set By Rory Clements (Corpus, Nucleus, Nemesis, [Hardcover] Hitler's Secret)

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Meanwhile, Wilde's name is discovered on a Gestapo hit list. As the death toll rises, an unthinkable question emerges: could an Englishman be behind the plot? A series that is so addictive that when you finish one book you want to start the next immediately. As for the book, I really enjoyed it. It's my first experience with Rory Clements, who has chosen a much more modern period than usual: the 1930s. It's the perfect foil for political intrigue: Nazis, spies, Cambridge professors involved in Communist or Nazi plots, the abdication of the King, murder, drugs, Spanish gold... Clements has thrown it all in. The plot was well done, the writing good, but the winner for me was the lead, Thomas Wilde. He's intelligent and capable without being a superman. Plus, I was won over by that speech early on and thankfully never had to change my opinion of the man as the story sped along. I will certainly be around for his next adventure.

A Prince and a Spy (2021) – ​1942: The King’s brother, Prince George, Duke of Kent, is killed in a mysterious plane crash in the far north of Scotland. The official story is that it was an accident caused by pilot error, but not everyone is convinced. Cambridge spy Tom Wilde is sent north to investigate. What he discovers will have grave consequences for the entire world. I felt sorry for Tom having to cope alone whilst Lydia is away and I wondered if she would come to regret her decision to live apart from her husband and child, rather a selfish decision in my view.We did get to see more of Tom’s home life in this book, with his wife Lydia starting out in her career as a doctor away from the family home, which in turn brought new faces into his life that were clearly hiding things and you had to wonder what and why and if they were in on the plot to kill him. Professor Tom Wilde wants to return to a normal life. To his professorship at Cambridge, to his wife and child, to the book he wants to write. But somehow it seems the world isn't quite ready for him to retire to normality, and he is thrown into a plot that could change the course of England's future, and the world's as well.

Home grown fascism is central to the plot and seems to be quite vogue in current wartime thrillers. It is a subject that has been somewhat played down in the past and well deserves to be exposed the bleaching effect of sunlight. Perhaps it’s the result of the last few years with Brexit and immigration controls that are providing the inspiration for a reassessment within literature? It’s fall 1945 and the British are adjusting to the postwar world. The end of the war didn’t result in the lifting of many wartime laws. Food, clothing and gasoline were still rationed and a lot of rationing wasn’t lifted til the 1950’s. Wilde has returned to his Cambridge work and family, but strange things start to happen to his friends and family. A strange submarine is sighted off the coast not far from Cambridge and people start dying from diseases like the plague. Who’s involved in the murderous plot? Is there even a plot? At this point, I felt like I was fielding incoming as the book’s plot and the characters were bombarding me. There were few characters who were who they claimed and almost everyone wanted to murder everyone else. Clements does an incredible job with setting the scene of post-war England, torn apart by the events of the previous six years, trying to rebuild itself and its people. The description of the destruction across the cities, and the feeling that those living through it must have sensed was incredibly relatable, and you really felt as though you fully understood the struggles and difficulties the characters would have been going through, from the rationing still in effect, to the difficulty of returning to normal life both mentally and physically. The destruction across also came through really well. With the conspiracies growing by the day, John Shakespeare is living a rather quiet life. That all goes up in flames when he receives a summons from Robert Cecil. Cecil is a young statesman who must be taken seriously. In his career, he has been able to dominate within the structure of the Queen’s reign. Now he is demanding that Shakespeare enter the service of the government and the queen once more. Whether or not Shakespeare wishes to do so is irrelevant; he must serve his country. Especially since these are times of war and strife with great uncertainty. Early October 1945. Off the east coast of England, a Japanese submarine surfaces close to a deserted beach. Its mysterious cargo is unloaded and then afterwards it is blown up by its crew and all disappear into the depths of the North Sea. Quite a dramatic opening!Corpus is a remarkable chronicle of the treacherous game of poisoned politics, teasing the moves from its players with considerable skill to result in a thoroughly exhilarating fusion of espionage, intrigue and murder. Main character John Shakespeare is given both cases to solve. Mary, Queen of Scots, is scheduled for execution and the Spanish Armada is ready to strike. Traitors and enemies have their heads displayed on pikes high above the London Bridge. It is a time of peril for England, where chaos and fear threaten to reign. Shakespeare must go into an underworld that includes a strange array of people– including his brother Will, the struggling writer. As Rory Clements observes in his afterword to the book, ‘It is a world exhausted by war, desperate for peace – and extremely vulnerable because few have any appetite for further conflict’. This is the foundation upon which the author builds the compelling story at the heart of the book. It involves some extremely nasty goings-on, sadly based on fact. Wilde is a truly brilliant character who is no wannabe hero just a determined, level headed problem solver when the need demands, which will come in particularly handy in the minefield of political riddles he’s stumbled into. There he finds a trio of friends distanced over time and their prominent families, two of whom have been tainted by sudden deaths. After connecting a few erratic dots Wilde is directed into the path of a mysterious journalist whose talents allude to events more instrumental than getting a scoop for The Times. I struggled with Corpus and eventual

As I read on, I started to see other links between the world of John Shakespeare and the world of Tom Wilde. For instance, the covert action, spying, intrigue and plots that infected Elizabethan times are mirrored in the turbulent politics of 1930s Britain. As in the Tudor period, there are ruthless zealots prepared to die for a cause, men of cunning practised in the art of duplicity, and unknowing dupes drawn into plots through greed, ‘fake news’ or misguided adherence to organisations much more extreme than they appear on the surface. A huge event goes unreported at the same time. Otto Hahn in Germany has made the first man-created fission and now the possibility of an atomic device coming to fruition is very likely. The Nazis have set their own physicist group up to build their own superbomb, aware that the Americans and the British are doing the same.Thomas Wilde is an American, and a History professor at Cambridge. He's focused on his students reaching their full potential, by questioning everything they come across. And he is determined not to let himself be swayed by any of the propaganda and the increasingly impassioned and volatile politics. When I requested this on NetGalley I was fascinated by the idea of the story, and had no idea this was part of a series. I was concerned that it would make little sense on its own - and I’m sure some of these characters and their relationships would be clearer if you knew the previous books - but I worried needlessly.

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