Tag Archives: Deborah Swift

#BookReview ‘The Shadow Network’ by Deborah Swift @swiftstory #WW2

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When Lili Bergen’s father is captured by the Nazis she flees Berlin for England where things don’t quite go to plan. The Shadow Network by Deborah Swift is second in her World War Two Secret Agent series. Deborah SwiftIn London and fearing for her father’s safety, Lilli finds it difficult to adapt to her new life. Accommodation and jobs are limited for enemy aliens, even though Lilli is half-Jewish, and people condemn her for her German accent. She works as a cleaner and has a spot singing at a local club. And then all enemy aliens are imprisoned on the Isle of Man. Billeted with two loud-spoken Nazi-supporting women, Lilli searches for things to keep busy. She is soon mending the broken appliances and singing at the social club. It is the latter that brings her to the attention of a secret Government department broadcasting false information to German citizens and military. The radio broadcasts are going well and are being expanded, so they need a German-speaking singer to add light relief between the more serious news stories. Key character Neil Callaghan, intelligence officer and brother to Nancy in the first book of the series The Silk Code, now takes centre stage in The Shadow Network.
Lilli is a fantastic character. Clever, brave, adaptable and loyal, I willed her on to succeed. She makes a promising start at the secret radion station and fits in well with the team which includes radio technicians, an orchestra made of up German POWs and German-speaking news announcers. Her world is turned upside down when Bren Murphy, the Irish boyfriend who broke her heart in Berlin, arrives one day as a new announcer. Lilli suspects he is a secret Nazi who betrayed her to the authorities in Berlin and blames him for her father’s disappearance. In England he poses as an Irish actor, calls himself Johnny Murphy and acts as if he’s never met Lilli before.
This is a rollicking adventure that I didn’t want to put down. The technical story of the secret fake news broadcasts is fascinating and, as Lilli tries to find out if Bren/Johnny did betray her in Berlin, she must get closer to him. Too many things about him don’t make sense. Lilli takes more and more risks as she investigates Johnny’s lies, made difficult not just because of Johnny’s popularity with the team but also because she is sweet on their boss, Neil Callaghan. The wartime action combines nicely with Lilli’s emotional sub-plot and her attraction to both men. The final quarter is a dangerous chase to foil Johnny’s bomb plot that risks destroying everything that Neil’s propaganda department has achieved.
A really enjoyable read based on the real life Radio Aspidistra radio station that broadcast propaganda in World War Two.
Third is the series is Operation Tulip.

Read my review of the first book in this series:-
THE SILK CODE #1WW2SECRETAGENT

If you like this, try:-
‘Transcription’ by Kate Atkinson
‘After the Party’ by Cressida Connolly
‘The Secret Shore’ by Liz Fenwick

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE SHADOW NETWORK by Deborah Swift @swiftstory https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-9Va via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Stephen Spotswood

#BookReview ‘The Silk Code’ by Deborah Swift @swiftstory #WW2

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World War Two is one of my favourite periods to read about and so I expected much from The Silk Code by Deborah Swift, especially as it is based on the Special Operations Executive in London. Coding, female agents, secrets, spies. Deborah SwiftOn the rebound from a broken engagement, Nancy Callaghan leaves her beautiful but claustrophobic home in Scotland for London. Her brother Neil, who works in an unnamed adminstrative department in Baker Street, offers to put her forward for a secretarial job. Except Baker Street is the home of SOE and Nancy turns out to be a dab hand at decoding, especially the ‘indecipherables,’ the messages sent by agents that are muddled and meaningless. Nancy finds Neil much changed; he seems to sleep little, is out much of the night, is grumpy and uncommunicative. Then when Nancy takes a shine to Tom Lockwood, the expert who trains the coders, Neil instantly disapproves. Of course there is more going on here than office politics. Is it simply a matter of professional jealousy or is there a traitor in the building? Why is the death rate of SOE agents parachuted into Holland so high? And why won’t the bosses listen to Tom’s suspicions? When Nancy is given an ultimatum – spy on your colleagues for the good of your country, or be demoted and moved from Baker Street – she feels she has no choice.
This is a thrilling story packed with moral choices of the ‘do the easy thing or the right thing’ type. Based on true history but populated with mostly fictional characters, Swift has written a novel that kept me reading just another chapter. The pace is fast following the introduction to Nancy in rural Scotland and Swift convincingly shows Nancy’s difficulties arriving in a strange city, living in a box room in her taciturn brother’s flat, training to do a job that isn’t explained alongside colleagues who have all signed the Official Secrets Act. As Nancy is trying to work out what is going on, so is the reader. Everyone knows only so much and everyone, it seems, has secrets.
When Tom and Nancy invent a method of printing one-time codes on silk cloth that can be hidden in the agents’ clothing, little do they realise that Nancy will soon be in Holland. Half-Dutch and fluent in the language, Nancy is a natural for SOE espionage training. But she truly has little idea of what she is flying into. N-Section in Holland is a vipers’ nest of double agents with Nazis masquerading as Allied coders. From the moment her feet touch the ground, she doesn’t know who to trust.
The Silk Code is a very good introduction to Swift’s WW2 Secret Agent series. Next is The Shadow Network. Deborah Swift is a new author to me and I’d also like to read some of her historical fiction.

Here’s my review of the next in this series:-
THE SHADOW NETWORK #2WW2SECRETAGENT

If you like this, try:-
‘The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society’ by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom
‘The Rose Code’ by Kate Quinn

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview THE SILK CODE by Deborah Swift @swiftstory https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Sr via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- Renita D’Silva