The Girl in Berlin

by Elizabeth Wilson

Overview

Summer, 1951. Two suspected spies, Burgess and Maclean, have disappeared, and the nation is obsessed with their whereabouts.

Speculation is at fever pitch when Colin Harris, a member of the Communist Party who has been in Germany for several years, turns up to see his old friends Dinah and Alan Wentworth. He has news: he has fallen in love with a girl in East Berlin, and is coming home - with her - for good. Meanwhile, Jack McGovern, who sometimes feels like the only decent man in Special Branch, has a rendezvous with a real spy. Miles Kingdom thinks there's a mole at MI5, and he wants McGovern's help.

A novel about secrets, betrayal and unearthing the truth, The Girl in Berlin is a reminder that when nothing is as it seems, no-one can be trusted - even those you think you know best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847658081
Publisher:	Profile
Publication date:	05/03/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

An independent researcher and writer best known for her commentaries on feminism and popular culture, Elizabeth Wilson is currently Visiting Professor at the London College of Fashion. She is the author of several non-fiction books. Her novels The Twilight Hour [9781852424770] and War Damage [9781846686504] are also published by Serpent's Tail.
My family was involved in running the British Empire in increasingly lowly postions sliding slowly down the social scale. They felt quite dislocated after WW II and my mother led a very marginal existence. Perhaps because of this she had me educated at St Paul's Girls' School, where I encountered a completely different world of the Jewish and non Jewish intelligentsia, and then at Oxford. Possbily because of the discrepancy between home background and sophisticated educational milieu I was extremely rebellious. I trained as a psychiatric social worker because of an interest in psychoanalysis, but throughout 10 years working in the field I was repelled by its conservative ethos and morality and eventually escaped to a polytechnic. But this time I was involved in Gay Liberation and the Women's Movement, which defined the 1970s for me. In the 1980s I became a lesbian co-parent and later a parent governor at Camden School for Girls. Beginning in the mid-70s I wrote a number of polemical/academic works about women, and then shifted into an interest in fashion and dress (I am currently Visiting Professor at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London). For some years I was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but am now a Green Party member. I am currently working on another novel and also on a book about the necessity of atheism.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/19/2013
British author Wilson masterfully uses misdirection and distraction in this clever tale of espionage and morality, a marked improvement over her two earlier post-WWII novels, The Twilight Hour and War Damage. In 1951, as Britain reacts in shock to the disappearance of suspected Soviet moles Burgess and Maclean, disgraced Communist Party member Colin Harris returns to London from his sojourn in East Berlin, where his activities attracted the attention of the intelligence community. Meanwhile, Jack McGovern of Special Branch, a product of the left-wing working class, is recruited for a counter-intelligence operation: a hunt for a suspected mole that will drag him to East Berlin. There, McGovern will be lucky not to join the mounting list of murder victims. Grand themes of global conflict prove to be mere background for a myriad of personal agendas, as the innocent are sacrificed for expediency and the powerful kid themselves that their days of reckoning will never arrive. Agent: Faith Evans, Faith Evans Associates (U.K.). (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"…Wilson masterfully uses misdirection and distraction in this clever tale of espionage and morality…" -Publishers Weekly

“Wilson does a fine job of evoking the creepy paranoia of the early Cold War years—subtexts humming under every exchange, duplicity seeming to breed in the rubble. A must for fans of the superb BBC drama The Hour.” -Booklist

“…taut and intricate period piece, enthusiastically recommended for fans of mystery and suspense.” -Midwest Bookreview

From the Publisher