New Frost thriller will delight historians and World War Two buffs
AS its title makes plain, Mark Frost’s World War Two thriller is about two objectives. Yet so energetic is the first undertaken that you almost forget there’s a second.It’s December 1944 and the Nazis are losing Europe. Hitler calls on his most revered commando, Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny, to take part in a Hail Mary attack on Allied forces in Belgium and Luxembourg — what will become the Battle of the Bulge.
Skorzeny’s brigade in the overall assault is to slip behind enemy lines with English-speaking troops disguised as American GIs. They’re taught to use Zippos and lust after Betty Grable.
Their first objective is to create confusion ahead of the looming German assault by changing sign posts, spying on rival troop movements and sabotaging whatever they can.
So far, all this is part of the historical record. Skorzeny, the Battle of the Bulge and even Hitler’s audacious first objective — called “Operation Greif” — all happened.
It’s all pretty cracking stuff — but wait. Have you forgotten? There’s a second, ultra-secret objective: Twenty members of Skorzeny’s group are to hurry to France to kill someone really, really important.
Frost, who the publisher says relied on newly released US military documents, concentrates on this second plot by creating two characters in the special commando unit: Bernie Oster, a nice Brooklyn-born kid whose family moved to Germany before the war, and an evil SS officer, Erich Von Leinsdorf, the son of a German diplomat who spent his formative years in England.
Both men are picked for the second objective, though only Von Leinsdorf, who is chosen overall leader, knows what it is. Oster, who secretly has begun to loathe the Third Reich, vows to try to sabotage the saboteurs.
To complicate matters, a military policeman gets wise to the plan and is hot on their trail.
Frost’s ability to transport readers both to 1944 and to the chilly, frantic front lines of World War Two — which includes an account of the massacre at Malmedy — is worth the book’s price alone.
By the time the second caper pops up in the last third of the book, The Second Objective turns into a flat-out page-turner, moving as fast as the frenetic characters do.
Historians and World War Two buffs are likely to appreciate the intense detail Frost has included about key skirmishes and infantry life. Even if that doesn’t appeal to fiction fans, there’s plenty here to keep you wondering how it all ends.
