The Enigma
New York, N.Y. The New American Library, Inc., 1980. First Signet Printing [stated]. Mass market paperback. [8], 200 pages. Stamp at top of first page. Stamp inside front cover. Cover worn, soiled, and creased. Black mark on bottom edge. Corner of one page creased. Includes Prologue, and chapters on The Adventurer, The Soldier, The Girl, and The Enigma. Also includes Epilogue, Aftermath, and Author's notes. She is Michele, a beautiful young Jewish woman whose family was murdered by the Germans and who is now willing to use sex for vengeance and treachery. And as the Gestapo's most dangerous agent relentlessly pursues the Baron through a Parisian underworld of collaborators and crossed and double-crossed relationships, she becomes the irresistible lure in a perilous gamble that can win or lose the war. This is a Nerve Twisting World War II Spy Thriller "In the Tradition of Eye of the Needle, and The Day of the Jackal.'' The name used is a pseudonym. The author is described as a well-known Israeli author who served as press secretary to General Moshe Dayan during the Six Day War and later, as a paratrooper, crossed the Suez Canal into Egypt during the Yom Kipper War. This is possibly Naphtali Lau-Lavie but the documentation of military service is unclear. Derived from a Kirkus review: Hitler's first V-2 has gone astray and landed in Sweden. Its charred remains are shipped to Churchill, who realizes that the D-Day invasion may be repulsed by these deadly rockets--he must have access to the German Enigma codes. And so Bodley of Special Operations arranges the release from a British jail of Francis de Belvoir, a thief and smuggler possessing the makeup skills of Laurence Olivier and the swashbuckling savoir-faire of Raffles. De Belvoir will steal a German Enigma code machine and hijack it to London. After arranging for an enormous number of disguises to be shipped to him in Paris via Lisbon, he parachutes into France and sets up an operation with the Underground to heist an Enigma being shipped on a train. But Oberst Rudolf von Beck, his nemesis, knows all about the raid--he and de Belvoir share the same ravishing mistress, Michele Levine. So the smuggler next uses his disguises to arrange for the Communist underground to help him steal an unlisted Enigma from yon Beck's headquarters. But the mission ultimately is a failure--exactly what Churchill intended it to be from the start, since the British had the Enigma all along (this much is historical fact): de Belvoir's mission was just a charade to make the Germans believe that England didn't have the Enigma. A serviceable cloak-and-dagger. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Spy, British Intelligence, Francis de Belvoir, Prisoner, Cipher Machine, Enigma, Gestapo, Collaborators, Vengeance, Treachery, Sexual Liaison, Murder, Nazi, Rudolf von Beck, Michele Levine, Smuggler
ISBN: 0451089200
[Book #82340]
Price: $18.50