By W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV
Reviewed by The Cipher Brief's Brad Christian
The Enemy of My Enemy, G.P. Putnam's Sons, December 11, 2018
W.E.B. Griffin is the well-known author of seven bestselling series. The Enemy of My Enemy is the fifth installment in the “Clandestine Operations” series, and is co-written with his son, William Butterworth IV. The Enemy of My Enemy follows book IV, Death at Nuremberg where readers are introduced to Special Agent James D. Cronley, Jr., a young military intelligence officer assigned to DCI (the Directorate of Central Intelligence) whose duties in the year after WWII ended include protecting the U.S. chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials from a potential kidnapping, and hunting down and dismantling the Odessa organization, a shadowy group dedicated to helping Nazi war criminals escape to South America.
Enemy of My Enemy opens with a newly-appointed President Truman scrambling to assemble a team of trusted advisors after the death of President Roosevelt, and dealing with his first major crisis, the escape of two Nazi war criminals, Franz von Dietelburg and Wilhem Burgdorf from the tribunal prison at Nuremberg. Dietelburg and Burgdorf are suspected of a myriad of war crimes, and also of being involved in Odessa. After the two escape, the administration turns to Captain Jim Cronley to lead the hunt and bring them back. Captain Cronley is recalled from Argentina, where he had been spending time after his most recent mission which had ruffled feathers in his chain of command.
The book offers a very gritty account of WWII intelligence operations but takes a very long time to really grab the reader with a compelling plot. This is not a book for a first-time reader to the series. There are too many characters introduced in the first chapters, combined with a complex and somewhat disjointed story. I found myself drawn into the descriptions of some of the tradecraft and operations, seeing some reflections in modern day ops some 70 plus years later, but really struggled to connect with the story. There isn’t really a single plot and the complicated twists and turns that included introducing an agreement by the Vatican to hide Nazi money, just didn’t grab me.
The author’s co-mingling of a love interest, who became involved in the intelligence mission, while she and her infant son were traveling with Cronley from Argentina, along with a priest who was assigned to the team to try and uncover a rumored religion started by Heinrich Himmler, were two examples of plot points that were at the same time unbelievable and distracting.
It felt like the book would have benefitted from the authors taking a little more time to remind readers of the post-WWII environment. Tensions between intelligence organizations were high and filled with drama of their own. The setting itself begged more of a historical tell.
On the plus side, the book is rich with diversity, with the experiences of American, Russian and French intelligence officers interwoven throughout the book. The depictions of Russian and American officers collaborating together is not something you can imagine happening today. The book is a strong reminder of some of the evil that the allies faced down together in WWII.
This book earns a rating of 2.5 out of four trench coats.
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