They were STRANGE ENEMIES! Once they were just two young lovers, pledging their devotion in a Mecklenberg garden. Now they are reluctant rivals enmeshed in the biggest conflict the world has ever seen. While the Great War had forged him into the so-called Brain-Devil, America’s top agent, she had become the famous Fraulein Doktor, Germany’s most alluring and elusive spy. When love and loyalty collide in eight epic tales of WWI aviation and intrigue, the bullets—and the sparks—are going to fly.
Donald Edward Keyhoe (June 20, 1897 – November 29, 1988) was an American Marine Corps naval aviator and writer of aviation articles and stories. In the 1950s, Keyhoe became a UFO researcher and writer, arguing that the U.S. government should conduct research into UFO matters, and should publicly release all its UFO files. [Wikipedia]
As I mentioned in my previous review of Strange War, those who know Donald Keyhoe only from his numerous books and articles about flying saucers will be very surprised by the contents of this book. The stories in Strange Enemies action-filled pulse-pounding red-blooded tales from the aviation pulp magazines of the mid-1930s, and recount the adventures of Captain Philip Strange, the so-called "Brain Devil of G-2," during the First World War. Where the tales in the first book focused on the strange and weird aspects of the Great War (pterodactyls, mystery zeppelins, unknown poisons, etc), this latest volume brings Captain Strange's many adversaries center stage, especially the enigmatic and beautiful German Spymaster Karol von Marlow, known to all as Fraulein Doktor, whom Strange loved before the War...and still does. Although the stories were separately published over a three-year period, and each stands very well on its own, they do form something of a loosely connected narrative as characters and plotlines slip in and out, from story to story. While the characters are well developed for the genre of the times, it is the intense aerial action that is worth the price of admission, and where Keyhoe demonstrates his expertise of every aspect of aviation and air combat.