Duncan Kyle (1930–2001)

It’s 1941. The United States has not yet entered the Second World War. An organization of expatriate Germans in the States is trying to drum up loyalty to the Fatherland. It’s not averse to a little blackmail in order to get people on board, and pilot Ernie Miller is about to find this out the hard way. As a pilot, he may be called upon to use these skills for nefarious means…

I picked up this book entirely on the strength of the cheerful yellow seaplane on the cover, and it was a wise purchase indeed. About half the book is set in Canada, which I was not expecting at all, so that was a nice bonus. And the book delivered amply on the aviation front: lots of technical details to keep the nerds like me happy, but plenty of adventure and thrills as well. Less helpful was the eyeroll-inducing language about women’s instincts whenever Ernie’s wife, Dot, was mentioned—and this is definitely more of a man’s fictional universe. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this a great deal, and I found it had a fresh enough (to me) angle on the Second World War to hold my interest.… (meer)