Nucleus by Rory Clements

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and for once didn't race through it to the end, I savoured it.  Reading 50 or so pages and then setting it aside to let the themes percolate in the grey matter before picking it back up again an hour or two later.  There is just so much going on between these covers that you run the risk of careening off the cliff edge if you don't take a step back.

The telling is wonderfully evocative of the time and place without descending in to farce.  It is both a very modern telling and a delicious throw back to a less technological age.  The massing of heavy storm clouds of war is oppressive and you can feel the threat of war seeping in to personal and professional lives and yet the telling has a lightness of touch that shows people determined to wring every last scintilla of enjoyment from their lives before the storm breaks.

Apparently, we have already met Tom Wilde in a previous novel about his exploits in Cambridge but having not read this previous outpouring is not a detriment to reading Nucleus.  From the off Rory Clements allows us to inhabit the skin of his characters and this is never more apparent than with Tom Wilde and Lydia Morris.  It is less easy to slip into the characters of Phillip Eaton and Frau Dr Haas but this is not due to "bad writing" but due to the twisty nature of their characters.

Nobody here is who they appear to be and this is never more apparent than in the case of Henty O'Gara and Mrs Fanny Winch.  A wonderful pair of side characters who very definitely deceive the reader in a completely plausible way.  Even the glamorous Clarissa Lancing and her American "business partner" Milt. Hardiman are well fleshed out and not all they first appear.

This is a finely honed thriller that actually keeps you guessing with espionage and counter-espionage running rampant you know about as much as out protagonist, Tom, about who he should and should not trust.  Set against the peaceful River Cam we are constantly reminded that it is May Week, a time for fun and celebration and this is juxtaposed excellently against the German Threat.

To start talking about the plot here would do a disservice to anyone reading this review.  Simply put you need to buy this book and soak it up.  With action taking us from the Quaker operated Kindertansport, to Dachau, through IRA terror attacks (as we would term them now) and on to eccentric physicists plying their trade in sleepy Cambridge it has a ton of action.  Action that feels very fitting for the late 1930s.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS NOVEL FROM READERS FIRST IN EXCHANGE FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.

**Review originally published January 16th, 2018**