Prompt – The First book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed.
Medium – Book
About the Book – The true story of a MI5 agent who worked with Fifth Columnists during WW2, Robert Hutton tells the story of Eric Roberts, code-named Agent Jack. Roberts operated within England during the Second World War, locating those living in Britain who were loyal to Hitler and Nazism. He was extremely clever in the way that he did this, persuading the ‘agents’ to pass him information as a ‘Gestapo officer’, so that MI5 knew the identities of these people. He also discouraged them from acts of sabotage and from going to other places (such as embassies) where they could pass the information that they had gathered to sources where it might reach Germany. Roberts was a skilful and masterful operator, who demonstrates all the values that you would expect from a secret agent – although at the beginning of the war, MI5 had to approach his boss at the local bank to see whether he could be released for war work!
My Rating – 6.5/10. This book was a really interesting one, and I enjoyed reading it. I particularly liked that it referenced some of the other books I have read around this subject, such as ‘Double Cross’ by Ben Macintyre and Hitler’s British Traitors by Tim Tate. In order of preference, I would place this book squarely between the two mentioned above. Of the three, Macintyre’s is my favourite, the most interesting and the most fast-paced. Agent Jack is fast-paced in places, but does have some instances where I found that I was skipping ahead a bit. I liked the evident richness of the research that Hutton had used for the book – Roberts’s own notes were particularly illuminating.
I enjoyed the ways in which the author portrayed and introduced the main characters – the master spy Roberts, the aristocratic and intelligent Victor Rothschild, his assistant and scientist Tess Clay, and all of the Nazi ‘spies’ who ended up actually working for, rather than against, the British. I particularly enjoyed the irony of the anti-Semitic spies working for Rothschild, the most high-ranking and successful Jew in the country at the time. As a history book, there was plenty of information available and I read the book in a quite short amount of time. I did find, however, that there was relatively little new information being given to me, as I had already read a couple of other books on the subject.
Would I read the book again? Probably not, to be honest. This book will go on the charity shop pile for when they re-open again!
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