Joel N. Ross Double Cross Blind

Double Cross Bind

Joel Ross

Doubleday, Jul 2005, $24.95, 372 pp.

ISBN: 0385513887

On December 1, 1941, American Thomas Wall becomes alert in a London asylum though he aches all over. He is recovering from severe wounds received in battle on Crete where his Canadian unit was slaughtered due to a betrayal. Thomas's diplomatic brother, Earl, sold his troops out to the Nazis. When Thomas recovers fully, he plans to confront and probably kill his sibling.

British M15 intelligence officers coax Thomas to work with them masquerading as his brother in order to gain information from captured German spy Sondegger and protect the Twenty Committee of double agents. Sondegger gives him clues to microfilm that contain Japanese information on a pending attack of American Pacific bases. Needing help, Thomas turns to his former lover and now Earl's British Intel wife, Harriet, but he quickly wonders if that was an error as he struggles with who is a friend and who is a foe.

DOUBLE CROSS BLIND is a rousing World War II espionage thriller that sub-genre fans will gain immense pleasure from. Ironically though the reader knows the big picture event that will happen in less than a week, the beleaguered hero tries to obtain the information to prevent or at least prepare for the attack. Though the secondary characters come out of stereotypical espionage 101, Joel N. Ross provides an exhilarating tense thriller that grips the audience due to its reluctant champion, a soldier forced into the cold.

Harriet Klausner