THE TROJAN HEARSE

Captain Reitz is a lover of ships. His task as a U-boat commander is to destroy them - blow caverns in their hulls and send them to the ocean bed - but every time he strikes at an Allied convoy he feels a sense of waste … as if he has betrayed the very things he loves. It hurts him just as much to watch the death-throes of a sinking vessel as it does to observe the agonized struggles of its drowning crew. It doesn't make him any less effective as a commanding officer in the German Navy, but it does make him contemptuous of upstart young Nazis like his First Lieutenant, Rhode: ruthless killing machines who relish inflicting such slaughter.

So how, then, does the humane Captain Reitz come to be placed in charge of a wheezing, rusty old freighter called the Stralsund … more - a ship destined to be hunted by his own former U-boat, now commanded by the newly promoted Rhode? And what, for that matter, is the real truth behind the virtual suicide mission that Reitz has been sent on - one which can only begin by hijacking a fast British merchantman in mid-Atlantic …?

Brian Callison gives twist after twist to this exciting, action-packed naval adventure of total war at sea: of deception, corruption and piracy at the Third Reich's highest levels. His descriptions of merchantmen, their crews and the terrifying fates that await them are, as always, superb, complemented here by the sardonic gallows humour that makes his novels such a delight.

"Here's a dandy tale of the briny with so many sea changes that the plot churns like a ship caught in an ocean storm."  SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER.