Emerald
Book Reviews

• Publishers Weekly

  “British author Baddock (The Dutch Caper) keeps his latest espionage thriller whizzing along right up to a slam-bang ending. During the last days of the Third Reich, agents Alan Cormack and Tony Woodward are dropped into Hitler's crumbling Berlin to try to bring out an Allied spy called Emerald. The glamorous Emerald is Marianne Kovacs, nee Driscoll, the Irish-born wife of a Hungarian diplomat; she has fed important information to England for years. Currently the mistress of a German general, she has also dallied with Goebbels. While Cormack and Woodward suspect they are expendable, they don’t know the extent of the danger closing in on them and Marianne. The NKVD, aided by double agent Kim Philby, is plotting to grab her. The Russians blackmail a German colonel into chasing Marianne, and she and the British agents weave in and out of several traps in breathtaking episodes filled with violent action. The pace is terrific and Baddock holds the reader all the way to the gory finale.”

• Batimore Daily Record

  “Fast-paced and taut, Emerald is a purist’s thriller, a spare, no-frills chiaroscuro of letters. The emphasis is on intrigue and action; from the start, we’re served up plenty of both… British agents Alan Cormack and Tony Woodward (they appeared in The Dutch Caper) are flown into Berlin to bring ‘Emerald’ out, unaware that Russian spy Kim Philby is monitoring their movements from London and passing on information to the NKVD, who want Emerald for themselves. She claims to have knowledge of the ODESSA files, documents detailing the Nazi hierarchy’s escape routes out of Berlin. This is the only reason that MI6, who deemed her ‘expendable’, have sent in a rescue mission at all.
  
  The story turns into a chase as the Russians, as well as the Germans, try to capture them. Leading it is Gestapo officer Alex Rindt, an antagonist we do not want to hate at all. He is, after all, a man who has nothing to live for except what we all live for: the people we love. Of all the book’s characters, his is the most finely drawn; his anguish, deep and palpable, is felt throughout. Rindt is blackmailed into working for the Russians when his wife is captured by the NKVD in Danzig. He can have her back, they say, only if he delivers Emerald to them.

  Baddock works awfully hard to keep us off balance and guessing. And he does, too, as Emerald and her ‘two knights in shining armour’ engage Rindt’s forces in a seesaw battle of wits, each side gaining, losing, then regaining the upper hand right up to the explosive finale.”

• CJ International

  “Baddock’s novel Emerald moves at an exhilarating pace that intensifies with the entrance of two British agents sent to attempt a desperate rescue mission of Emerald. The dialogue is genuine and his portrayal of the sassy, nervy Marianne Kovacs is memorable.”

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