SS-GB (Len Deighton, 1978)

This book was an impulse purchase in Just Books, and once I started it I was riveted, and I’ve since picked up several more by the same author. It’s a fascinating espionage thriller set in a 1941, and – here’s the fascinating part! – in occupied Britain, in an alternative history where Germany won World War II.

So through the course of the story we find that King George VI is being held prisoner in the Tower of London, the Queen and princesses are in New Zealand, and Winston Churchill has been executed, and as it’s 1941, the USA hasn’t had much involvement, although they are being bothered by the Japanese. All of this is going on in the background of a plot that begins with a murder and extends out into the different branches of the German police force and Nazi government. DS Douglas Archer is the novel’s hero, he’s a British policemen working in Scotland Yard with a German boss, and he’s the one who gets drawn into the murder that turns into a conspiracy around plans for an atomic bomb and an attempt by one unit of the occupying forces getting one over another.

Deighton provides an exciting, pleasurable read, with a cracking story peopled with believable characters, and the backdrop of SS-GB adds an extra layer of detail and intrigue. The novel is more about the story than it is a detailed account of what Britain might have been like, these details are skilfully woven in along the way so that you build up a picture of how bleak life would have been like, without being delivered a history lecture. Towards the end there were a few twists and turns that stretched my interest, and it got a bit confusing with the warring German factions, but on the whole this was a thrilling read.