No Human Enemy

by John Gardner

Overview

England, June 1944.

Exactly one week after the D-Day landings came the vengeance weapons. It was the beginning of a period which, to the war-weary inhabitants of southern England, was psychologically much worse than the days of the Blitz. With Allied forces gaining a foothold after the Normandy landings, Hitler unleashes his most vicious weapon of war yet---the V-1 flying bomb.

One of these new weapons lands on a Camberwell convent, killing three nuns. Suzie Mountford and her boss and secret lover Tommy Livermore are sent to investigate. When it's discovered that one of the dead nuns is not what she seems, they find themselves in the middle of a complex, sinister plot.

John Gardner spins a story spanning feuding families, the terror of Hitler's new warfare, and a final Nazi plot to end the war in their favor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466849372
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/02/2013
Series:	Suzie Mountford Mysteries , #5
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	302 KB

About the Author

John Gardner wrote over fifty novels, including a series of highly acclaimed comic novels featuring the cowardly secret agent Boysie Oakes, and a number of continuation James Bond books commissioned by the Ian Fleming copyright holders.

John Gardner (1926-2007) wrote more than fifty novels, including a series of highly acclaimed comic novels featuring the cowardly secret agent Boysie Oakes, and a number of continuation James Bond books commissioned by the Ian Fleming copyright holders.

Editorial Reviews

British author Gardner (1926-2007) offers an authentic view of London in peril from V-1 rockets in his fifth and presumably final Suzie Mountford WWII mystery (after 2006's Troubled Midnight). During the summer of 1944, policewoman Suzie Mountford of the Reserve Squad and her boss (and lover) Tommy Livermore go into action after a V-1 lands on a convent, killing several nuns-one of whom turns out to have been murdered beforehand, another of whom proves to be a man. As Mountford and Livermore try to identify the victims, they realize that what first appeared to be an unusual murder case is actually part of a larger and potentially deadly conspiracy. Despite stock characters out of a 1940s film and period Britishisms that may puzzle the average U.S. reader, those with a taste for old-school tales of war-time intrigue should be satisfied. (Aug.)

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Publishers Weekly

In wartime England, WDI Suzie Mountford confronts the strange case of the nun who wasn't. It's a time of cautious optimism in battered Old Blighty. With the D-Day landings progressing nicely, the end of the exhausting war has become encouragingly foreseeable. But now, renewing despair, come Hitler's fiendishly destructive, last-ditch flying bombs. When a V-1 lands near the Anglican convent of St. Catherine of Siena, three nuns are killed. Or so at first it seems until further investigation uncovers, shockingly, the presence of a man in nun's clothing-a man whose throat had been cut before the bomb exploded. Soon enough, there are additional homicides on the Murder Squad's plate, and sexy Suzie and her boss, the equally sexy Tommy Livermore, must cope with another headline-grabber. It's the case of a young woman whose lifestyle was scandalously uncloistered. Is it possible the two cases are connected-and that they're also connected to Hitler's doodlebug? Suzie buckles down to find the answers. Good cop though she is, however, the live bodies in her bed have always been a higher priority than the dead bodies in her cases. The plotting is deft, the prose sprightly, but the exercise is unintentionally valedictory for randy Suzie (Troubled Midnight, 2006, etc.), whose remarkable creator died in 2007 after 80 years and 52 books.

Kirkus Reviews