Help finding book

[Sarah]

New to group and I hope you can help me. Several years ago I read a spy book that started off with a 15 yo boy helping people escape and then I think he killed them as he was a spy and was looking for their escape route. Sound familiar? I will love to find the name and author of this book.

[Feliks, Moderator]

Well that is a pretty tough wicket! Hmmm! Not gonna be easy!

You came to the right place though. Because I can surprisingly name at least one *sequence* in a book which is exactly like that. However, it only happens in one portion of the novel, rather than being the entire story.

In this somewhat undistinguished and obscure spy romp: The Man Called Kyril there is a place where this occurs. It happens in Greece. Kyril is a Ruzzkie spy sent to the UK to help his commie boss protect himself against a backstabbing rival. He's being framed. So Kyril must track down this guy (a CIA double, fleeing the curtain) even though the CIA is trying to stop him all along the way.

Thus, in communist-Greece, a 15 yr old boy is the contact/mule and he turns on Kyril to get some CIA money. Kyril has to clobber him; even though he feels bad about it. Pretty nasty. He's in the passenger seat with a gun held on him by the boy as he drives, so he suddenly swivels and thrusts the kid hard against the door with his heels. Splat!

There is only one other place I know: Len Deighton's 'An Expensive Place to Die' --towards the end of the tale--a rainy night in Belgium--a farmhouse. Similarly, a young boy is the contact and he also tries to pull a double-cross.

I'm just providing these in case something jogs your memory.

[Sarah]

Feliks, Thanks for your reply and comments on this book. It sounds as if it could be, but not sure. I don't remember the escape being from Greece.

[S.wagenaar]

I’m looking for help tracking down an obscure book as well. It’s a WWII spy thriller set in the US. Think Eye of the Needle, but moved from England to the coastal US (not sure if it’s East Coast or Pacific Northwest). Some things I recall; Nazi spy/saboteur seems like anyone else in America, lives and works in a small town/city, possibly working in logging/lumber industry. Might be romancing a local widow who doesn’t know his Nazi past. Might be in contact with German sub/ship just offshore. Action set piece in an industrial complex, possibly a mill or foundry, an axe fight, some one gets impaled on a spike of iron...
That’s all I have. I’m hoping to access the hive-mind of like minded readers here at Goodreads. Thanks in advance,
Stan.

[Denise]

Hi,
I'm not familiar with the book. However, the setting more than likely would have been the East Coast, as the spies on the West Coast were Japanese. The Japanese and Germens then shared information, sometimes meeting in the Gulf Coast or off of Mexico. German subs were along the East Coast and down south. One Coast Guard Captain I interviewed told me they suspected a German spy traveling up the Mississippi and they finally did catch up to the man. I've been interviewing men and women from the WWII era and researching Japanese espionage off of the West Coast for 8 years for my books, Orchids of War and Storms From a Clear Sky. Some of these interviews are on my web in my blogs www.denisefrisno.com I'll keep a look out for the book. Fascinating time. Denise Frisino