Shadows of War by Michael Ridpath

A year or two back I reviewed Michael Ridpath’s Traitor’s Gate, and it was in my top books of the  year. I was somewhat excited to discover a sequel was out. I have little reading time these days but I shuffled this straight to the top.

Book one was set in Germany in the year before the Second World War. It was a tense thriller the built constantly and presented a time and place that was darkly fascinating to explore. I had no idea how there could be a book two.

Shadows of War presents a whole new story set in the first half year or so of the war (39-40) as Germany begins to press home its power, threatening Western Europe and Britain defies the Nazi regime, despite a strong sector that favours terms with Hitler and a cessation of hostilities.

On the face of things, I would saw SoW lacks a little of the tension and grit of the first book, but I think what it lacks in the stressful action, it makes up for in other ways. This book’s exploration of the politics and the motivations on both sides is extraordinary. And a dozen times through the novel I came across a fact that was of such intense interest and surprise to me that I had to run off to Google to convince myself that this wasn’t just hokum made up on the spot for the plot. For the record, it isn’t. The book is fictional, but everything in it is possible, even when you can’t believe it.

Though there are scenes of exciting espionage and action, much of the more military aspect in this comes from a peripheral source that, in truth, the book doesn’t specifically need, but which supplies a great deal of pertinent information in a manner that also gives us a soldier’s eye view of the frontlines of General Guderian’s blitzkrieg push into the west.

There is at least one moment in the book that utterly threw me. A totally unexpected event that I tip my hat to the author for.

It is at times poignant, at times dark and frightening, at times exciting and even uplifting. I think, though, that the thing I value most in the book is its atmosphere and its portrayal of the time and people. If the events that Ridpath recounts here happened, and they very well might have, then it casts a dark reflection of our great pride in being a nation that stood up to Nazi horror.

Shadows of War is a worthy sequel, a book that made me blink, made me think, and left me with questions and a torrent of emotion. I guess that says it all. Rest assured I shall seek out a third book if Ridpath decides to write it. I highly recommend reading this and its predecessor. Probably back-to-back they are even better.

Go get it, people.