Tin Sky

1. The fourth in the Martin Bora series. Spellbinding multi-layered crime novel set in a fascinating period and place. Set in Ukraine as the Germans regroup after the disaster of Stalingrad. As the Wehrmacht prepare for the Kursk counter-offensive, a Russian general defects aboard a T-34, the most advanced tank of the war. Soon he and another general, this one previously captured, are found dead in their cells.

2. Controversially, the hero is an aristocratic German officer in the Wehrmacht. With echoes of Claus von Stauffenberg, he is torn between his duty as an officer and his integrity as a human being. At a time when weariness, disillusionment, and battle fatigue are a soldier’s daily fare, Bora seems to be one of the few whose sanity was not marred by the horrors of war.

3. Will appeal to fans of Phillip Kerr (Bernie Gunther series), Alan Furst (“Spies of the Balkans”) and Bernhard Schlink’s “The Reader”.

4. It should benefit from the vogue for WWII in fiction, film and tv. “Valkyrie”, “Inglourious Basterds”, “Pacific”.

5. Fourth of a series of five to be published by Bitter Lemon Press.