In this debut novel, veteran journalist Silva mines the reliable territory of World War II espionage to produce a gripping, historically detailed thriller. In early 1944 the Allies were preparing their invasion of Normandy; critical to the invasion's success was an elaborate set of deceptions--from phony radio signals to bogus airfields and barracks--intended to keep Hitler in the dark about when and where the Allied troops would arrive. Catherine Blake is the beautiful, ruthless spy who could bring the whole charade crashing down; Alfred Vicary is the brilliant but bumbling professor Churchill has tapped to protect the operation. Along with a teeming cast of other characters, real and fictional, they bring the chase to a furious and satisfying climax.

From Publishers Weekly
Will Nazi spies escape from Britain with Allied plans for the imminent invasion of Normandy? As history tells us, obviously not?so the challenge for veteran journalist and CNN producer Silva in his first novel is to brew up enough intrigue and tension to make readers forget the obvious. While Silva employs multiple characters and settings, his key players are an English counterintelligence officer and a beautiful Nazi spy. Alfred Vicary is an academic recruited to work for MI5. The intelligence reports he fabricates and sends to Germany are designed to persuade the Nazis that their utterly compromised spy network, the Abwehr, is still fully operational. MI5 learns, however, that the Abwehr has been keeping a few sleeper operatives under deep cover throughout the war. Now they pose a serious threat to the invasion plans. One of these operatives is Catherine Blake, a ruthless assassin and spy. Her assignment is to become romantically involved with Peter Jordan, an American engineer working on a top-secret D-Day project. Will Vicary be able to stop her? Silva's characters are strong; but, despite occasional bursts of high suspense and a body count to remember, his overall pacing is uneven, and most readers won't forget that D-Day succeeded. The final plot twist, moreover, while unpredictable, seems more logical than shocking. Silva's debut will find an audience among devoted readers of WWII thrillers, and deservedly so, but he's not yet on a par with such masters of the genre as Ken Follett, Robert Harris and Jack Higgins. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; BOMC alternate selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection; simultaneous BDD audio; foreign rights to 16 countries; author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This first novel comes from an unlikely source: a newspaper and TV journalist widely known as executive producer of CNN's Washington programs. Unlikely because this novel is the assured, magisterial work of a seasoned spy and suspense writer. There are no cheap gimmicks here, no deus ex machina, just a totally engrossing account of spying at its worst in a time of war at its worst. Based on prodigious research and filled with tellingly accurate detail, Silva's saga pits a beautiful German Mata Hari against a collegial Mr. Chips. Both are unknowingly caught in an intrigue to hoodwink the German forces. This novel will be heavily advertised in all media, so expectations will be high. Don't buy just one copy.?Barbara Conaty, Library of CongressCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New York Times
Mr. Silva's first entry into the espionage sweepstakes...is a notably good example of its kind; it is briskly suspenseful, tightly constructed and full of well-rounded, believable characters. Most important, Mr. Silva's book includes a deception within a deception reminiscent of John le Carre's classic The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

The Washington Post
Silva has the elements of the genre of spy thriller down pat. His characters - especially the beautiful Anna Katerina von Steiner, who becomes Catherine Blake, and Vicary - are drawn with detail and substance. In addition, Silva manages to endow all the secondary characters with memorable style. His writing is clear and evocative, and the world at war comes vividly alive...The Unlikely Spy is a dandy tale.

The Times of London
The Unlikely Spy is a wartime chronicle in the mold of Robert Harris's Enigma, the bestseller of last Christmas, and every bit as good; a tense, well-crafted piece of story-telling centered on one of the war's greatest often-overlooked secrets - Project Mulberry... Silva brings to life a tale of suspense that spirals its way to an evocative climax.

The San Francisco Chronicle
The Unlikely Spy is a literate thriller, well-researched and fast moving.

From AudioFile
The D-day invasion in 1944 has inspired both highbrow and high-action thrillers. Silva has crafted an intriguing story which falls somewhere in between. The abridgment plays up the action of the story but hints at more intriguing characterizations. Roger Rees has a challenging job to present numerous parallel plots as a network of German spies is activated in wartime Britain. Rees is very good at keeping the characters distinct enough but, wisely, doesn't fall into the trap of stereotypical German or British accents. Rees picks up on the compelling pace of the story and uses it well. This audiobook may keep you circling the block. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Silva's debut novel--already selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and Reader's Digest Condensed Books--has all the earmarks of success: glamour, adventure, suspense, romance, and trench-coated spies, not to mention sharing a premise with a previous best-seller, Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle (1978). Commercial considerations aside, it's a terrific book all on its own. Set in England during World War II, the story focuses on Professor Alfred Vicary, who is asked by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to help M15 keep the Nazis from learning England's top-secret plans for the D-Day invasion. Vicary's opposite number on the Nazi side is a top-level German spy code-named Catherine Blake. Working under deep cover as a volunteer in London's hospitals during the Blitz, Blake is a fragile blond beauty with the cold heart of a trained assassin. She'll stop at nothing to gain the information her Nazi masters need to win the war (the Eye of the Needle connection). Vicary's task: to seek out and destroy Catherine and her fellow Nazis before they can gain access to the D-Day plans and dash the Allies' hopes of a quick victory. The contest of minds and wills between Blake and Vicary--each holding millions of lives and the future of their respective countries at stake--is riveting, intriguing, and suspense-filled. Silva's action-packed spy thriller, written in the style of the grand masters of espionage, blends all the right ingredients--skillful writing, a multilayered plot, larger-than-life characters, and edge-of-your-seat suspense--for a story guaranteed to keep readers riveted. Highly recommended. Emily Melton

From Kirkus Reviews
Television producer Silva delivers a fine, old-fashioned WW II debut thriller that pits an English don against Admiral Wilhelm Canaris's Abwehr--in a deadly contest of wits on the eve of the Allied invasion of occupied Europe. Recruited for the War Office's MI5 by his friend Winston Churchill, Alfred Vicary (a shrewd history professor who was badly wounded as a behind-the-lines courier during WW I) is assigned early in 1944 to a hush-hush effort to mislead Hitler's intelligence services concerning D-day's primary target. While the bachelor academic employs captured German spies to transmit disinformation to Berlin, radio intercepts confirm that a sleeper agent has been activated to determine where the amphibious assault will come ashore. Despite a discouraging lack of leads, Vicary sets about tracking down the hitherto unsuspected operative (a murderous young woman long established in London under the name Catherine Blake) and the Wehrmacht veteran parachuted in to give her a hand. Dogged police work eventually puts counterespionage watchers on Catherine's trail but not before she beds a susceptible US Navy officer. Aware that the besotted Yank's knowledge could put SHAEF's greatest secret in enemy hands, Vicary coolly blackmails him into cooperating in the ongoing deception. Before he can roll up the network, however, Catherine's alert accomplice verifies that MI5 is on to them. Leaving a slew of bodies in their wake, the two bolt for a U-boat waiting offshore. Although the fugitives are prevented from escaping the British Isles or reporting what they know, Vicary is found wanting by his superiors. Only after Allied forces are marching through France to the Rhineland does Vicary learn that he played a vital role in an endgame more duplicitous than any the department's workaday treacheries had prepared him for. A fine, twisty tale of military intelligence, notable for graceful prose, credibly motivated characters, and evocative detail. (First printing of 150,000; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

People
Breathtaking.

New York Times
Briskly suspenseful.

Washington Post
Evocative...memorable...a classic World War II espionage tale.

Book Description
"In wartime," Winston Churchill wrote, "truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." For Britain's counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable-a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor. The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer-and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day...

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Catherine Blake is the model war widow. Ever since she lost her RAF pilot husband in the Battle of Britain, this beautiful aristocrat has kept a stiff upper lip while caring for victims of the blitz in London's hospitals. The problem is that Catherine Blake is also a deep-cover Nazi spy, charged by Hitler with uncovering the details of D-Day. Her nemesis is Alfred Vicary, a fumbling professor of history barely able to remember where he placed his threadbare tweed jacket, let alone sustain a relationship. But Vicary is also a confidant of Winston Churchill's, who has chosen this reclusive don to run England's critical counterintelligence operations. Against this backdrop comes Daniel Silva's The Unlikely Spy, a sophisticated and altogether exceptional World War II thriller. Based on fact, Silva's fast-paced novel moves effortlessly from the Berlin High Command's espionage centers to the U-boat-infested North Sea, from the privileged playgrounds of Long Island to Hyde Park's shadowy paths - a grand canvas of intrigue that sweeps the reader along in a breathtaking race against time. If Catherine escapes to Germany, the Nazis will know the Allied invasion will be at Normandy; and if Vicary doesn't stop her, all of Britain's greatest wartime deceptions and ploys will have been for naught. But why does it seem as if Vicary's superiors want him to fail?

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Will Nazi spies escape from Britain with Allied plans for the imminent invasion of Normandy? As history tells us, obviously not-so the challenge for veteran journalist and CNN producer Silva in his first novel is to brew up enough intrigue and tension to make readers forget the obvious. While Silva employs multiple characters and settings, his key players are an English counterintelligence officer and a beautiful Nazi spy. Alfred Vicary is an academic recruited to work for MI5. The intelligence reports he fabricates and sends to Germany are designed to persuade the Nazis that their utterly compromised spy network, the Abwehr, is still fully operational. MI5 learns, however, that the Abwehr has been keeping a few sleeper operatives under deep cover throughout the war. Now they pose a serious threat to the invasion plans. One of these operatives is Catherine Blake, a ruthless assassin and spy. Her assignment is to become romantically involved with Peter Jordan, an American engineer working on a top-secret D-Day project. Will Vicary be able to stop her? Silva's characters are strong; but, despite occasional bursts of high suspense and a body count to remember, his overall pacing is uneven, and most readers won't forget that D-Day succeeded. The final plot twist, moreover, while unpredictable, seems more logical than shocking. Silva's debut will find an audience among devoted readers of WWII thrillers, and deservedly so, but he's not yet on a par with such masters of the genre as Ken Follett, Robert Harris and Jack Higgins. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; BOMC alternate selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection; simultaneous BDD audio; foreign rights to 16 countries; author tour. (Jan.)

Library Journal

This first novel, in which a treacherous Nazi female is pursued by a former American history professor during World War II, is scheduled for an unusually high first printing: 150,000 copies. Note the book's advertising tag line: "One man can't win the war, but one woman can lose it."

AudioFile - Robin F. Whitten

The D-day invasion in 1944 has inspired both highbrow and high-action thrillers. Silva has crafted an intriguing story which falls somewhere in between. The abridgment plays up the action of the story but hints at more intriguing characterizations. Roger Rees has a challenging job to present numerous parallel plots as a network of German spies is activated in wartime Britain. Rees is very good at keeping the characters distinct enough but, wisely, doesn￯﾿ﾽt fall into the trap of stereotypical German or British accents. Rees picks up on the compelling pace of the story and uses it well. This audiobook may keep you circling the block. R.F.W. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Television producer Silva delivers a fine, old-fashioned WW II debut thriller that pits an English don against Admiral Wilhelm Canaris's Abwehr—in a deadly contest of wits on the eve of the Allied invasion of occupied Europe.

Recruited for the War Office's MI5 by his friend Winston Churchill, Alfred Vicary (a shrewd history professor who was badly wounded as a behind-the-lines courier during WW I) is assigned early in 1944 to a hush-hush effort to mislead Hitler's intelligence services concerning D-day's primary target. While the bachelor academic employs captured German spies to transmit disinformation to Berlin, radio intercepts confirm that a sleeper agent has been activated to determine where the amphibious assault will come ashore. Despite a discouraging lack of leads, Vicary sets about tracking down the hitherto unsuspected operative (a murderous young woman long established in London under the name Catherine Blake) and the Wehrmacht veteran parachuted in to give her a hand. Dogged police work eventually puts counterespionage watchers on Catherine's trail but not before she beds a susceptible US Navy officer. Aware that the besotted Yank's knowledge could put SHAEF's greatest secret in enemy hands, Vicary coolly blackmails him into cooperating in the ongoing deception. Before he can roll up the network, however, Catherine's alert accomplice verifies that MI5 is on to them. Leaving a slew of bodies in their wake, the two bolt for a U-boat waiting offshore. Although the fugitives are prevented from escaping the British Isles or reporting what they know, Vicary is found wanting by his superiors. Only after Allied forces are marching through France to the Rhineland does Vicary learn that he played a vital role in an endgame more duplicitous than any the department's workaday treacheries had prepared him for.

A fine, twisty tale of military intelligence, notable for graceful prose, credibly motivated characters, and evocative detail.