The Ministry of Fear

The Ministry of Fear

1943 • 229 pages

Ratings10

Average rating4

15

In London during the Blitz, an amnesiac must outwit a twisted Nazi plot in this “master thriller” of espionage, murder, and deception (Time). On a peaceful Sunday afternoon, Arthur Rowe comes upon a charity fete in the gardens of a Cambridgeshire vicarage where he wins a game of chance. If only this were an ordinary day. Britain is under threat by Germany, and the air raid sirens that bring the bazaar to a halt expose Rowe as no ordinary man. Recently released from a psychiatric prison for the mercy killing of his wife, he is burdened by guilt, and now, in possession of a seemingly innocuous prize, on the run from a nest of Nazi spies who want him dead. Pursued on a dark odyssey through the bombed-out streets of London, he becomes enmeshed in a tangle of secrets that reach into the dark recesses of his own forgotten past. And there isn’t a soul he can trust, not even himself. Because Arthur Rowe doesn’t even know who he really is. “A storyteller of genius,” Graham Greene composed his serpentine mystery of authentic wartime espionage—and one the author’s personal favorites—while working for MI6 (Evelyn Waugh). But The Ministry of Fear “is more than a mere thriller . . . [it’s a] hypnotic moonstone of a novel” (The New York Times).

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Popular Reviews

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An interesting espionage thriller set in the WW2 London. A man wins a cake at a fête, and steps into a nightmare world. He becomes hunted by enemies he doesn't quite understand. And that's just the start of it...

Daren
DarenSupporter

Of the Greene that I have read, he really excels at the espionage fiction.
I enjoyed this one. I enjoyed the way it was split up, the flow of the novel and the characters.


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