First of all, let me just say I'm a sucker for a book with a swastika on the cover. So when I saw this one at my local bargain bookstore, I had to buy it.

Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by it.

It started of promising: An American, Tom Wall, is in what, for all intents and purposes, is a sanitarium. He's an insomniac who has a fixation on his older brother, Earl. See, he's convinced Earl, who works for the COI (precursor to the CIA), is a traitor who is the reason why Tom's squad was demolished on Crete.

Earl is missing, however, and so Tom (who happens to bear a striking resemblance to his brother) is recruited by British intelligence to pose as his brother in order to extract information from a Nazi defector who has been in contact with Earl regarding a possible attack on Pearl Harbor.

Okay, so far, so good.

This is where it all unravels a little. The biggest problem I have with the book is the complexity of the plot. I love a good, interesting plot, but there are just too many twists and too many characters. Along with the protagonist, Tom, there's Davies-Frank and Harriet and Sondegger and Duckblind (for whom "darling" seems to be the only adjective she knows) and Audrey and Inch and Chilton and Rugg and Renard and Melville and Highcastle and MacGovern and Mrs. Harper and...well, you get the idea. Ross uses them all adequately, but it's a lot to keep track of and some of the minor characters are simply annoying. Oh, and there's a "scorned lover" subplot to boot.

I liked the overall plot though, which is why I kept reading until the end. Not a terrible book, but I've read much better WWII/Nazi spy fiction. Frederick Forsyth, Greg Iles, and Ken Follett come to mind.