Let Us Do Evil (Shadows of a Spy Book 3)
– Learn More‘Excitingly told, moving and rather chilling’ – The Sunday Times.
Palestine, June 1942.
As the atrocities of World War Two start to make front page news across Europe, another battle is playing out in the Holy Land.
British trained commandos have assassinated Reinhard Heydrich, Reich Protektor of Bohemia and a founder of the SS intelligence service.
One of the Protektor’s disciples is an Anglo-German SS officer who was raised in Palestine as part of its affluent Templer community, descendants of Bavarian evangelicals who often embraced Hitler as firmly as their grandfathers embraced God.
The Templer decides to avenge Heydrich by killing Sir Henry MacMichael, Palestine’s High Commissioner.
But after The Templer attempts, and fails, to assassinate MacMichael, Palestine police detective Walter Calderwell begins to hunt him down.
Calderwell relentlessly pursues the Templer from Jerusalem to the Egyptian border and on through the Nile Delta to the El Alamein front line itself.
But can he stop him in time?
Or will he become the means to let him do evil?
‘Let Us Do Evil’ brilliantly blends fact with fiction in a novel that will appeal to fans of Alan Furst and and John Le Carre.
Praise for Colin Smith’s books:
‘Excitingly told, moving and rather chilling’ – The Sunday Times.
‘A rumbustious thriller-spy-war story set in Palestine 1917, culminating in the cavalry charge by the Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry against Austrian artillery…his wide panorama is consistently interesting.’ – The Financial Times.
‘He has captured marvellously well the atmosphere as well as the reality of the Middle East in 1917…As for the description of the famous charge at Huj, I defy any reader to control a rapid beating of the heart.’ – The Daily Telegraph.
‘An excellently researched and well written saga…’ – Yorkshire Evening Post.
“A work of fiction cleverly woven around a cast of real-life characters and historical events… a good read.” – Coventry Evening Telegraph
“Colin Smith brings two special talents to his recreation of Allenby’s Palestine campaign: he was once a soldier and writes of the Other Ranks with insight and authenticity; and he spent much of his working life as The Observer’s Middle East correspondent… more than an immensely readable tale, a vivid reminder that the countries of the Middle East have been formed in the crucible of treachery as well as battle.” Esmond Wright. Contemporary Review.
Colin Smith lived in Jerusalem and Cairo as The Observer’s Middle East correspondent, and his military histories include the widely acclaimed ‘Alamein: War Without Hate’. His fiction includes ‘Spies of Jerusalem’ and ‘Collateral Damage’.