The Man In The Bunker by Rory Clements

Today it is over to Mandie who has a blog tour review of The Man In The Bunker by Rory Clements. Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the tour invite and publisher Zaffre for the advance review copy. Here’s what the book is all about:

About the Book

WHAT IF HITLER HAD SURVIVED?

In the gripping new spy thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Hitler’s Secret, a Cambridge spy must find the truth behind Hitler’s death. But exactly who is the man in the bunker?

Germany, late summer 1945 – The war is over but the country is in ruins. Millions of refugees and holocaust survivors strive to rebuild their lives in displaced persons camps. Millions of German soldiers and SS men are held captive in primitive conditions in open-air detention centres. Everywhere, civilians are desperate for food and shelter. No one admits to having voted Nazi, yet many are unrepentant.

Adolf Hitler is said to have killed himself in his Berlin bunker. But no body was found – and many people believe he is alive. Newspapers are full of stories reporting sightings and theories. Even Stalin, whose own troops captured the bunker, has told President Truman he believes the former Führer is not dead. Day by day, American and British intelligence officers subject senior members of the Nazi regime to gruelling interrogation in their quest for their truth.

Enter Tom Wilde – the Cambridge professor and spy sent in to find out the truth…

Dramatic, intelligent, and brilliantly compelling, THE MAN IN THE BUNKER is Rory’s best WWII thriller yet – perfect for readers of Robert Harris, C J Sansom and Joseph Kanon.

Mandie’s Thoughts

With the premise of this book being “what if Hitler had survived” I found that I really couldn’t say no to this book even thought I had not read the first 5 in the series. I have to say that this book stands up very well on its own and at no time did I feel that I had missed out on anything or that things did not make sense.

With the war over Tom Wilde is looking forward to life getting back to normal and going back to teaching. When his old colleagues contact him to determine if Hitler really did die in his bunker as reports had led everyone to believe, he was determined to stay well away from it all. He had done his bit. It is only when his wife convinces him that he will not be happy if he turns this mission down that he heads back to Germany to find out the truth. Partnered up with a headstrong Lieutenant from the British Army he has to overcome the distrust of the civilians who survived and also manage to stay alive.

I am not going to lie, when I saw how long the book was (476 pages) I did wonder what I had let myself in for but once I started I found it really hard to put the book down and finished it in 2 days. Tom Wilde is a character you can believe in right from the start. Despite having to put his life in the hands of others to get the answers they want; he has a healthy distrust of them that probably keeps him alive and one step ahead. He knows that his mission is not an easy one and that he will meet with resistance by those in Germany who believed in Hitler and all that he stood for. Working out who they are and those that are truly horrified by what happened in the war is not always easy and interrogating staff closest to Hitler in the final days may provide clues to the truth or may send him on a wild goose chase.

Lieutenant Mozes Heck is a real loose cannon who has his own agenda, after he lost his entire family in concentration camps. He is more of the shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy that causes Tom as many problems as he does get them out of bad situations. We do see a more generous side to him when he helps someone who is struggling to come to terms with the loss of her husband and son and I think it is this action that has you hoping he will survive it all more than you want to see him come to harm.

This is a fast-paced book that transports the reader across Europe whilst Wilde and Heck dig deep into the lies and the misinformation. With an ending that is left open for what may come next I think I might just have to do some investigating of my own and hunt down books 1 – 5 whilst I wait for the next instalment.

About the Author

RORY CLEMENTS is a Sunday Times bestselling author. He won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award for his second novel, Revenger, and a TV series of the John Shakespeare novels is currently in development. His latest novel, Hitler’s Secret, is a Sunday Times bestseller.

Rory lives in Norfolk with his family.

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