Member Review

Alex Gerlis' best series yet is hotting up nicely.

"The Second Traitor" opens in September 1940, some twelve months after the events of the first book in Alex Gerlis' Double Agent series. The search for the traitor in MI6, known as Archie, continues. But news of Hitler's planned invasion of Great Britain is now being taken seriously, and the newly-formed Invasion Warning Sub-Committee is working flat out to uncover the exact date it will take place. Furthermore, the organisation known as The Group – a collection of British and Irish Nazi collaborators – is working to pave the way for the takeover. However, The Annexe has been shut down, and ironically, Charles Cooper has been recruited to help capture the fifth-columnists.

These and several other threads from the first book all combine to make "The Second Traitor" a complex, but fast-moving story. As usual the author cleverly takes real-life events and people and weaves them into the narrative. Characters we met previously are slowly filling out, and new characters are introduced to add further layers of deception and confusion. The backdrop to "Second Traitor" is the real-life Operation Sea Lion which Hitler formulated having decided Britain offered a bigger threat than the Soviet Union. The story nicely questions just how taken with this plan Hitler's commanders were, while other intriguing subplots include the methods employed by the Nazis to embed spies throughout England and the IRA's plans to assist with the invasion in order to hasten the reunification of Ireland.

The story also takes a big leap forward, as MI6 begins to suspect the existence of a second traitor, Bertie. This promises more intrigue and deception in book three.

This four-book series clearly expects the reader to be invested in the long term - you can't read this book without having read the first one. Plots and subplots are still being laid; characters and motives are still being teased (and there's a large cast of characters to keep track of) and flashbacks, while offering insights into how current events came to be, invite further speculation into the identity of Archie. Clearly some characters will come and go quickly across the books, but others will span the series, as their lives as double, even triple, agents become more dangerous and complex.

Fans of Alex Gerlis' books are going to be equally fascinated and frustrated by "The Second Traitor" but either way will be further drawn in to this complex and engaging book. Highly recommended.