The Quicksilver of Deception

Tom O'Brien: OSS Agent #4

by Patrick Nolan Clark

This is a story about D-Day, not the D-Day that took place but the one the Allies wanted Hitler and the German General Staff to believe in and plan for. The British and American intelligence services ran a brilliant deception program to fool Hitler. Unfortunately, OSS intelligence officer Tom O'Brien found himself to be a sacrificial pawn in this giant chess match. Unwilling to accept this role, O'Brien plays his own cat and mouse game with the Gestapo and the SS while he struggles to survive. Parachuting in darkness into Nazi occupied France, he hopes his plan will keep him alive until D-Day.

262 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 29, 2014

Reviews

[Dj · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I read this type of book more often I might have rated it higher. I found this an enjoyable read if a bit disjointed in places and sometimes things seemed to happen in an all to convenient manner. This of course is a downside of a great number of adventure stories and with war related ones like this it seems to come up somewhat more often. Not that fact isn't stranger than fiction, but sometimes it seems that the individuals at the center of the action get involved with many more of the movers and shakers of the time than might have been more realistically the case. It does however give the author a chance to show off the research that was put into the background and when it is good it can be a pure joy to read characterizations of individuals that walked the pages of history. In this case the author is a deft hand with painting the character and bringing them to life without causing a jarring reaction that sets off alarm bells. He blends the fictional with the factual characters seamlessly making it feel as if they are in fact a part of the same time and not inserted into the story with a sledge hammer.

All in all an enjoyable read and one that I may have to follow up on to see how one of the other books read.

[Bev Walkling · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is apparently #4 in a series, but it can definitely be read as a stand-alone book without suffering. When I first started the book, I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy it. There were places where I felt a good editor would make a big difference, but the basic story was definitely strong enough to capture my interest and felt real as I was reading it. Once I was really into it, my kindle traveled with me throughout the day so I could find out what was coming next.The book started out with a dictionary to explain all the abbreviations one would encounter throughout the book and I really appreciated that.It ended with an epilogue explaining more of the actual history related to the events of the time.As a fan of historical novels related to World War 2 I felt this story of how deception was used to confuse the Germans over where the Allied invasion would actually take place was of great interest. There were times where you could tell the author was using today's perspective (knowledge about double agents like Kim Philby)but it didn't bother me. I enjoyed this enough that I went out and bought the other books in the series too.