Secret List of Heinrich

by Michael Barak

From a secret war room in Tel-Aviv where Israeli leaders hear a terrifying report, to the inner sanctum of the Kremlin where the final touches are given to a deadly scheme of conquest, to CIA headquarters in Washington where a beautiful double-agent receives orders from which even she recoils in horror, to a Las Vegas pleasure palace where a daring undercover agents lets himself be corrupted and seduced, to a villa in the south of France - converted by experts into a total torture chamber, to the very limits of tension and terror as nuclear blackmail, international intrigue, and a diabolical plot to destroy Israel and the West careen to a desperate climax....

230 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

A pseudonym of author Michael Bar-Zohar.

Reviews

[Mike Billington · Rating 5 out of 5]

A clever mix of fact and fiction, "The Secret List of Heinrich Roehm" is a taut, well-written novel about what has come to be called the Yom Kippur War and the events leading up to it.
Author Michael Bar-Zohar, a former journalist and Israeli paratrooper who took part in that war, writes with authority. He doesn´t waste words but, despite his somewhat spare writing style, he has a powerful narrative voice that puts the reader "in the moment" in virtually every scene.
The storyline seems, at first, to be a tad fantastical: A plan by the Soviet Union to destroy Israel and then subsequently threaten the Arab states of the Middle East with nuclear weapons to get them to stop supplying the United States and its allies with oil. I say that it seems a little fantastic at first glance, but given what we know about the current Russian regime and its efforts to undermine the U.S. and its allies with all manner of what used to be called "dirty tricks" I have no difficulty believing that the KGB could have hatched such a plot in the 1970s.
(Just a reminder, the current president of Russia is a former KGB operative and we have seen that Mr. Putin is audacious enough to meddle in both U.S. and U.K. politics at the highest levels.)
If you are looking for fast-moving spy thriller, I´d highly recommend this book.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

From a secret war room in Tel-Aviv where Israeli leaders hear a terrifying report, to the inner sanctum of the Kremlin where the final touches are given to a deadly scheme of conquest, to CIA headquarters in Washington where a beautiful double-agent receives orders from which even she recoils in horror, to a Las Vegas pleasure palace where a daring undercover agents lets himself be corrupted and seduced, to a villa in the south of France - converted by experts into a total torture chamber, to the very limits of tension and terror as nuclear blackmail, international intrigue, and a diabolical plot to destroy Israel and the West careen to a desperate climax....