Black Roses

I am helping my son learn about World War II at school right now and it has tied in with a real blossoming interest in the period that I myself have found. More and more often I find myself drawn to tales of the era after having fallen in love with Anne Blankman's young adult novel ‘Prisoner of Night and Fog”. I wish when I'd studied the subject at school I could have done so through literature and personal stories rather than the quite boring memorisation of dates of treaties and names of generals and politicians involved.

Books like this, the first of a series, by Jane Thynne take us right into the heart of pre-war Germany at a time when the Nationalist Socialist party has just come to power and suddenly Germany begins making changes that will lead the country down a road to war and leave the Jewish citizens of the country living a nightmare that would lead them to concentration camps and death.

Our heroine is young British actress Clara Vine, who having been offered a movie role in Berlin runs off to Germany to begin a new life. Once there she meets and is befriended by the wife of the newly appointed German Propaganda Minister and close friend of Adolf Hitler. Spun into a glamorous world she meets many people associated with the party and their wives and girlfriends and sometimes mistresses. Clara however has also been asked by the British government to provide them information about what she is hearing and seeing in order to help them spy on the Nazi party.

It is a really fast moving story and as some of the characters in play are actually real we learn much as we go about life in Berlin at the time and the inner workings of the wives of the Nazi hierarchy. with romance and glamour and mystery thrown in its a solidly good read and will I'm sure provide plenty of material for the next books in the series. The heroine is instantly likeable and I'm happy to bet she will still have sufficient secrets for us yet to uncover in the books ahead.