Dead Ground is a World War II thriller of the highest order and continues Graham Hurley’s “non-linear” The Spoils of War series, with each book covering a different aspect of World War II. The last book The Blood of Others was set around the Dieppe Raid in 1942. The books in the series are not written in chronological order but are linked by returning characters and can be read as standalone stories. Dead Ground focuses on the intelligence war fought in Spain at the end of the Spanish Civil War and the beginning of the Second World War, with Britain and Germany vying to influence Franco’s involvement in the Second World War. However, the central storyline is the Head of the Abwehr, Admiral Canaris’s plotting and counter plotting against the Nazi regime and their plans to force Britain to capitulate by capturing Gibraltar, Operation Felix.
Hurley expertly spins together the threads of fiction with historical fact as Annie Wrenne, a returning character, becomes caught up in Canaris’ plans. Wrenne, an Anglo-French Nurse and translator, was last seen in The Blood of Others working for Lord Louis Mountbatten and Dead Ground is very much a prologue to The Blood of Others, as it fleshes out Wrenne’s backstory. After witnessing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and suffering the heartbreak of a failed love affair, Wrenne becomes involved in the world of stolen art. She is also drawn into the shadowy world of espionage by returning character Carlos Ortega, a spy posing as a beggar who has been horribly disfigured and who Wrenne helps. Ortega entangles Wrenne with Tam Moncrieff, an MI5 agent and another returning character. At first all she has to do is gather snippets of gossip from drunk reporters, but Wrenne is soon pulled into a plot to assassinate Heinrich Himmler, the Head of the SS, when he visits Spain, in 1940. Ortega is hired as the hitman and Wrenne poses as his wife to provide cover while he travels through Nationalist controlled Spain. They work closely together to achieve their mission, but it is unclear where Ortega’s loyalties truly lie.
This is an intriguing and subtly written book with Canaris’s involvement in the plot against Himler and the cancelation of Operation Felix remaining unclear. It is also left open to interpretation whether he was acting to rid Germany of the madness of Nazi rule and to protect the Abwehr from the growing threat of the SS; or whether the whole operation was an elaborate sting by British Intelligence to frame Canaris to cultivate him as a source. Hurley’s writing is elegantly understated as he blends the lines between truth and speculation, adding a new dimension to one of the most fascinating questions of World War II. Was Admiral Canaris actively working to undermine the Nazi war effort? Hurley certainly suggests that he was and Canaris was executed by the SS for his part in the July bomb plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Alan Bardos is the author of Rising Tide published by Sharpe Books.
