David Downing

A LitHub Most Anticipated Crime, Mystery, and Thriller Title of 2018 In the series’ final installment, Jack McColl is sent to Soviet Russia, where the civil war is coming to an end. The Bolsheviks have won, but the country is in ruins. With the hopes engendered by the revolution hanging by a...

From best-selling author David Downing, master of historical espionage, comes a heart-wrenching depiction of Germany in the days leading up to World War II and the difficult choices of one man of conviction. In April 1938, a man calling himself Josef Hofmann arrives at a boarding house in Hamm...

Winter 1917: As a generation of Europe’s young men perish on the Eastern and Western fronts, British spy Jack McColl is assigned a sabotage mission deep in Central Asia, where German influence is strong. The mission only becomes more dangerous the closer he gets to its heart. Meanwhile, the...

Berlin, early 1948: The city, still occupied by the four Allied powers, still largely in ruins, has become the cockpit of a new Cold War, and as spring unfolds its German inhabitants live in fear of the Soviets enforcing a Western withdrawal. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the legacies of the War...

Spring 1915: World War One rages across Europe. Amidst this bloodbath of nations, where one man’s flag is another man’s shroud, a British spy is asked to do the impossible: seduce and betray the woman he loves, again. Only this time betrayal is a two-way street. Jack McColl, a spy for His...