New York Station

November 27, 2017
A multifaceted protagonist who’s a refreshing change from formulaic genre leads lifts this gritty spy thriller from Dudley (St. Kilda). In 1940, Roy Hawkins, an American spy who has been working for the British in Paris, wants to help in the resistance against the Germans, who occupied the city in June, but his orders are to leave France. Hawkins is dispatched to New York City, where his chief of station enlists him to stop a traitor from sharing shipping schedules with the Germans that could be used to guide U-boat attacks. A more complex assignment soon follows. Radio host Walter Ventnor—who refers to the Roosevelts as the Rosenfelds, preaches a focus on Fortress America, and spouts pro-Hitler propaganda—has allied himself with Dr. Hans Ludwig, a representative of the Nazi government. Hawkins must make sure that Ludwig doesn’t get his hands on a secret U.S. Navy system, sonar, which America has refused to sell to embattled Britain. Fans of Alan Furst and Joseph Kanon will find familiar pleasures.

November 1, 2017
August 1940. MI6 operative Roy Hawkins is reassigned from Paris to New York. But why? Paris is barely surviving under Nazi occupation and needs all the help it can get, but America is not even in the war. Bafflement turns to outrage, though, as Hawkins uncovers a conspiracy of almost unbelievable complexity and audacity. Can he stop the conspirators before they alter the direction of the war and the course of world history? Or will he allow his love for an American woman cloud his judgment and miss his chance to save a life? This is a thrilling WWII spy adventure with a classic love-versus-duty story, robust characters, and a nice sense of time and place. (The author makes sure we know we're in America of 1940 without a lot of window dressing.) A good, solid thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

March 26, 2018
Lane begins his narration of Dudley’s exciting WWII spy thriller using the crisp, polished tone of a news broadcaster. But when Roy Hawkins, a hard-boiled but humane American agent of Britain’s MI6, is ordered against his will to leave his anti-Fascist team in Nazi-occupied Paris for a new assignment in New York City, Lane toughens his rendition, reflecting Hawkins’s frustration and anger. Once in Manhattan, Hawkins’s anger is directed at a gallery of villains that includes kindly-voiced pro-Hitler radio commentator Walter Ventnor and thick-accented German diplomat Dr. Hans Ludwig. They’re attempting to interfere in the 1940 presidential election as well as steal the U.S. Navy’s secret new technology, sonar. While trying to stop a traitor from sharing shipping schedules with the Germans that could be used to guide U-boat attacks, he meets and falls in love with beautiful socialite Daisy van Scheck, whose private school accent Lane can’t quite emulate. He’s more successful giving voice to gruff, guttural G-man Mike Kelly; W, MI6’s genial, very British station chief; and dreary Nazi strongman Dieter. Both author and narrator combine to make Hawkins’s battle with the Bund a thrilling and fast-paced entertainment. A Blackstone hardcover.