War Cry (Courtney Series #14)

by Wilbur Smith, David Churchill

Overview

A thrilling tale of espionage, adventure, and danger, set in Africa and spanning from the Great War’s end to the dark days of World War II

WAR CRY

 

As a member of the remarkable Courtney family, Leon Courtney knows how quickly fortunes can be won and lost. Over the course of more than two centuries, generations of his family have risen and fallen with the tides of history. Leon, too, has experienced his own share of triumph and pain. In the wake of his beloved wife’s death, the renowned big-game hunter is raising his young daughter, Saffron, alone in colonial Kenya.

In the 1920s, the continent of Africa is a dangerous place. As Leon attempts to navigate the murky political waters of this most exquisitely beautiful and wildest of lands, his daughter grows into an independent and headstrong young woman bound for a far different life in Britain, as a student at Oxford.

But over the course of more than two decades, spies, traitors, and adventurers will dog their every step. As the fitful years of peace lead to the outbreak of the Second World War—involving Africa once more—Leon and Saffron must fight for their survival . . . and that of their illustrious family.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062276612
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/26/2017
Series:	Courtney Series , #14
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	153,870
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Described by Stephen King as “the best historical novelist,” WILBUR SMITH made his debut in 1964 with When the Lion Feeds and has since sold more than 125 million copies of his books worldwide and been translated into twenty-six different languages. Born in Central Africa in 1933, he now lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

12/01/2016
Next in the New York Times best-selling Smith's most popular series in America, this work finds big-game hunter Leon Courtney raising daughter Saffron alone in 1920s Kenya after his wife's death. Spies and adventurers swirl through in the buildup to World War II, threatening their very survival. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2017-02-21
Continuing Smith's Courtney family epic (Assegai, 2009, etc.), this novel focuses on big-game hunter Leon and his daughter, Saffron, during the post-World War I era, first on their great Kenya estate, Lusima, and then as they move toward the bloody fray that became World War II.It's an action-packed affair beginning in Africa with coltish young Saffron outdoing the boys on horseback, then attacking Saint Moritz's men-only Cresta Run skeleton-racing course, and ending with her manning a Vickers gun to protect the Greek nation's gold bullion reserves. The tale regularly shifts to Leon, too, but Saffron's adventures extend the Courtney legend, including when she falls in love with an "immediate, instinctive, animal passion" worthy of her clan. The attitude throughout is Old World British colonial, as is the dialogue. There's more than one reference to "the local peasantry." Saffron attends school in South Africa and Oxford. There she makes German friends who will lead to connections regarding her father's fortune and makes a disconcerting reacquaintance with his old enemies, the von Meerbach dynasty. As this story ends, Saffron is spotted by a mysterious older gentlemen connected to Britain's Special Operations Executive, while the man who stirred her animal passion is witness to the Babi Yar massacre. Meanwhile, Leon's been forced to helm the family's Cairo-based business, which is threatened by brother Frank's worship of Oswald Mosley. With cameo appearances by the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hitler, and Reinhard Heydrich and traveling everyplace from the Ritz in London to a Masai village, the story is wonderfully plotted, woven together by quick but not disconcerting cinematic shifts from scene to scene in a narrative that keeps the pages turning. Occasionally melodramatic, sometimes grandiloquent; those who liked Wouk's War and Remembrance will certainly enjoy this Smith saga.

Kirkus Reviews