Last Flight to Stalingrad

Set in 1942, Hurley’s compulsively readable fifth Spoils of War thriller (after Raid 42) finds journalist Werner Nehmann enjoying the good life in Berlin, where he resides in a friend’s lavish apartment with his beautiful nightclub pianist girlfriend and writes puff pieces to bolster the Nazi government and boost the German war effort for propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Nehmann thinks the Nazis are pompous, generally distasteful and some, like the SS, are monsters, but he keeps these opinions mostly to himself as he realizes he lives, prospers, and maybe dies at Goebbels’s whim. When Goebbels asks Nehmann a favor—to carry a love letter to the propaganda minister’s former mistress—Nehmann knows it’s a command, not a favor. When he fails in his mission, Goebbels punishes him by sending him to Stalingrad to write uplifting articles about the doomed German fight for the city. Nehmann’s an appealing character in an impossible situation, and it’s riveting to watch him try to stay alive. Fans of the late Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series will be enthralled. (July)