The second Joe Wilderness spy novel from Lawton, possibly one of the most under-appreciated British espionage writers. Following mishaps in Then We Take Berlin, Wilderness is now locked up and out of action until his father in law, a senior agent in MI6 has him sprung and sent back to Berlin in 1963, with the city of and its spy community in turmoil as the Berlin Wall is being erected with agents stranded on both sides. Surely an opportunity, alongside the likely prisoner exchange, for Joe to make a side profit involving ten thousand bottles of the finest Bordeaux wine. Nowhere as heroic as Le Carre or Deighton, Lawton confronts the absurdities and weaknesses of his highly fallible characters alongside the dangers of the Cold War. Endearing and all too human, as if Smiley was both morally flexible and at times a figure of fun!
A thrilling portrait of 1960s Berlin and Krushchev's Moscow, centring around the exchange of two spies - a Russian working for the KGB, and an unfortunate Englishman. Having shot someone in the chaos of 1963 Berlin, Wilderness finds himself locked up with little chance of escape. But an official pardon through his father-in-law Burne-Jones, a senior agent at MI6, means he is free to go - although forever in Burne-Jones's service. When the Russians started building the Berlin wall in 1961, two 'Unfortunate Englishmen' were trapped on opposite sides. Geoffrey Masefield in the Lubyanka, and Bernard Alleyn (alias KGB Captain Leonid Liubimov) in Wormwood Scrubs. In 1965 there is a new plan. To exchange the prisoners, a swap upon Berlin's bridge of spies. But, as ever, Joe has something on the side, just to make it interesting, just to make it profitable...
