An Affair of Spies
A Novel
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4.1 • 35 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the winner of the National Jewish Book Award—Ronald H. Balson's An Affair of Spies tells of a spy mission to rescue a defector from Germany and prevent the Nazis from creating an atomic bomb.
Nathan Silverman grew up in Berlin in the 1920s, the son of a homemaker and a theoretical physicist. His idyllic childhood was soon marred by increasing levels of bigotry against his family and the rest of the Jewish community, and after his uncle is arrested on Kristallnacht, he leaves Germany for New York City with only his mother’s wedding ring to sell for survival.
While attending an evening course at Columbia in 1942, Nathan notices a recruitment poster on a university wall and decides to enlist in the military and help fight the Nazi regime. To his surprise, he is quickly selected for a special assignment; he is trained as a spy, and ordered to report to the Manhattan Project. There he learns that the Allies are racing to develop a nuclear weapon before the Nazis, and a German theoretical physicist is hoping to defect. The physicist was a friend of his father's, and Nathan's mission is to return to Berlin via France and smuggle him out of Europe.
Nathan will be accompanied by Dr. Allison Fisher, a brilliant young scientist who can speak French; he travels to her lab at the University of Chicago for a crash course in nuclear physics, then they embark on their adventure. Nathan and Allison soon develop feelings for one another, but as their relationship deepens they move ever closer to their dangerous goal. Will they be able to escape Europe with the defector and start a new life together, or will they fail their mission and become two more casualties of war?
An Affair of Spies is an action-packed tale of heroism and love in the face of unspeakable evil. Author Ronald H. Balson has applied his unmatched talent for evocative and painstakingly authentic storytelling to the high-stakes world of espionage and created his most thrilling novel yet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Clichéd situations and underdeveloped characters mar this WWII historical from Balson (Defending Britta Stein). In 1943, Nathan Silverman, a German Jew and the son of a scientist who escaped to the U.S., enlists in the army. He's assigned to a special intelligence unit, but his plans to fight alongside his comrades in Europe are derailed when he's summoned to New York by Gen. Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, who wants him for a special mission. Groves has learned that Günther Snyder, a physicist who worked with Silverman's father at Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, may want to defect. Silverman reluctantly agrees to sneak into Germany, posing as a Nazi officer, both to help Snyder defect and to gain details about the Germans' nuclear program. Given Silverman's lack of scientific expertise, he's accompanied by an American physicist, who happens to be an attractive woman, Allison Fisher, setting up a romantic subplot. Most readers will anticipate how the story plays out. This lacks the grit and sense of realism of many other espionage novels centered on the race to build the first atom bomb.
