The Final Act of Daphne Divine by Syd Moore

The Final Act of Daphne Divine is the third instalment in my World War II series which looks at how the British Security Service exploited the Nazi’s obsession with the occult. Readers of the first two books will have a good idea of what’s coming. But I don’t think it’s a spoiler, for those who haven’t, to state a large part of the action takes place in Heinrich Himmler’s notorious occult castle. After all, it’s pictured on the cover.

Eighty years after its liberation the castle continues to exert a morbid fascination over many.

The SS Reichsführer leased Wewelsburg in 1934 as a school for the SS elite. He also wanted to create an impressive venue for SS leaders, and remodelled it in a strange, symbol-drenched style which married Arthurian legend with Germanic and Nordic rune ‘magic’. Himmler was obsessed with the occult, mysticism and esoterica. He had already commissioned Otto Rahn to search for the Holy Grail (think Indiana Jones) and a year after he leased the castle founded the Ahnenerbe, a SS division, which undertook research into folklore and prehistory. He also set up the Hexenkartothek (Witch Card Index) to compile information on the German witch hunts.

From 1935 to 1943, using the slave labour of the Wewelsburg (later Niederhagen) concentration camp inmates, the castle was remodelled extensively in a design that reflected his fixations.  When the allies closed in on 31 March 1945, Himmler ordered the SS to demolish the castle, covering evidence of the crimes committed there. The demolition squad ran out of explosives and resorted to setting the castle on fire. Most of it was gutted but the North Tower, with its crypt for rituals and the Obergruppenführersaal (Hall of the Supreme SS Leaders), survived. And so it was to there I travelled for research in 2024 and 2025.

Many aspects of the castle shocked and surprised me. For a start, I hadn’t expected there to be a ‘Family Day’ going on. But one has to remember that there’s been a building on the site for over a millennium. The Nazis’ association lasted less than eleven years and, aside from the North Tower, the rest of the castle reflects its long history as an early Medieval fort, a hunting lodge, its use during the witch trials, and its function as seat for the Prince-Bishops of Paderborn. There are displays featuring Ice Age artefacts and curious exhibits of traditional folk costumes from the region.

To visit the North Tower, however, you must pass through the Wewelsburg Memorial Museum’s permanent exhibition, Ideology and Terror of the SS. Though the material is difficult to handle, it prepares you for crossing over the moat into the monument to human suffering and totalitarian terror.

Every single person I saw walk through the arched entrance gasped and stopped. It is vast, echoing and dark, built to resemble an ancient Mycenaean tomb and is quite frankly – quite obviously – sinister. Its rounded spaces are designed to make you feel small and anxious. Your stomach plummets. The air is different, pregnant and tense, layered with so imagined horrors you can almost taste them.  I have visited many troubling sites in my life, but I have never been so affected by the atmosphere of a place.  The chamber’s architecture embraces ghastly theatre - twelve plinths are arranged around the perimeter. In the centre three steps lead to a pit, with a hole in its middle. Above it, at the apex of the ceiling, is a decorated swastika with four small square holes. Around the walls a series of paintings, Memorial Cycle by Josef Glahé, depict the human cost of war and the holocaust. The whole scene is devastating. 

On the second storey, the Obergruppenführersaal, a mosaiced runic sun wheel, in black marble, dominates the floor. The symbol was co-opted in the 1990s by extreme right wing neo-Nazi groups, who gave it the name the ‘Black Sun’. To avoid any ‘celebration’ or ‘romanticising’ of the thing, while there you are closely monitored. All visitors to the North Tower are forbidden to take photographs or wear symbols or clothing associated with far-right groups or racist slogans. Perhaps, in an effort to reclaim the space, this hall now forms part of a youth hostel that runs along the top of the castle (yes, you can stay there if you really want to). When I visited, neon orange and grey bean bags were scattered across the Nazi design.

Once I’d left, it took a while for me to ‘decompress’. The crypt’s atmosphere stays with you, as does the knowledge that you have just visited a site steeped in so much blood. Any writer or reader with a pinch of imagination cannot stop themselves from wondering - what happened within those walls?  What nasty rituals took place? Why is there a pit? What the hell is in it?

Though Himmler tried to bury his secrets in the ruins of the castle, some things have a way of coming to light. If you can bear the horror, you can find out what I made of it in my new book. 

 The Final Act of Daphne Devine by Syd Moore (One world Publications) Out Now

No mission is without its element of danger. But nothing could have prepared Daphne Devine for this... Back in enemy territory, Daphne and one-time lover Jack have been sent to deliver The Grimoire, a centuries-old book filled with mysticism and spells. Posing as a rare book dealer, she will hand the book to a prominent SS officer and send the Nazis into a spiral where their very beliefs are turned against them. But this is war. Behind every corner a betrayal is lurking and your enemies are often closer than you think. There are some things we cannot foresee, and these are the things that can kill us. Is this the mission where there can be no return?

Syd Moore can be found on  Facebook, Instagram @sydmoorewriter and X@sydmoore1

92 Is Just a Number

 So, who says so? Me of course!

My name is Dennis Higgins. Born in Surrey but now living in Yorkshire, I am a debut author at the grand old age of 92, but don't let my age put anyone off. 'The Heidorf Legacy ‘is a unique Cold War thriller that is as appropriate today as it would have been at the time of the original Cold War between the old Soviet Union and the Western Allies.

The inspiration for the story comes from the many visits that I made behind the so-called 'Iron Curtain' to East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic as it was then known as, during the time between 1953 and 1964 whilst I was serving in the Royal Air Force. This was at the height of the Cold War when East Germany was still under Russian rule.

Whilst serving time at RAF Oldenburg in West Germany I met and married a girl who had escaped to the West via the Berlin Underground Railway, a journey fraught with danger for anyone travelling without a permit. All of my friends were smitten by her, but it was a case of 'to the victor the spoils' as I was the only one who spoke fluent German. She was never able to return to her home in East Germany and sadly she died from cancer at a very young age. One of the main characters in my book, Helga, is my tribute to her. In the meantime I managed to make contact with her family on several of my visits to the East, and it was from her father, an ex-member of the old Kaiser's Prussian Guard that I learned much about Germany's decline during the rise of the Nazi regime. At the same time, I was also able to witness for myself the oppressive and devious methods used by both the Russian rulers and the East German Nationals who chose to support them.

As a widower with two very young children I was granted a compassionate discharge from the RAF but found the transition to civilian life very difficult. I tried my hand at several jobs, all of which I failed at before becoming the Administrator for a small group of Care Homes for elderly dementia sufferers, a post from which I retired at the age of seventy-five.

Fast forward fifteen years into the Covid epidemic. Now housebound by lockdown, I started to spend most of my time on the internet where I saw an advert for an international song-writing contest and, despite never having written anything before, decided to enter the lyric writing category. The contest attracted over ten thousand entries from eighty-three different countries worldwide and, much to my surprise and delight I not only won the lyrics category, but I became the overall winner of the whole contest. As a result of this I was asked to write lyrics for the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee Song.

Now ninety years old, and spurred on by these successes, I decided to try and write a thriller from an idea that had been lurking at the back of my mind ever since my time in East Germany, and The Heidorf Legacy is the result.

I am currently married to my second wife Bettina. We have been married sixty years this year and I describe her as the person who made my life worth living again. In total I now have three wonderful sons and an equally wonderful daughter.

My second novel, a crime thriller, based on a terrorist campaign against the innocent citizens of London, is almost ready for publication, as are my memoirs. I am also trying to follow another new path by attempting to write a film script for The Heidorf Legacy. Hopefully, I live long enough to finish it.

The Heidorf Legacy by Dennis Higgins (Foreshore Publishing) Out Now

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is 1945 and a young German physician pioneering genetic experiments to breed the new Nazi race is killed during the fall of Berlin to the Soviet Red Army. Straightforward: secrets to the grave. But a shocking legacy is discovered. A unique set of new-born identical twin boys - the world's first with matching fingerprints - are found by a Russian army officer. The babies are taken to Moscow for further examination. There plans are made to exploit the twin boy’s uniqueness. Years later with the Cold War rapidly becoming a distant memory the fate of the twin boys could not be more different. One is working for the Soviet Union's secret intelligence agency. The other has a privileged life in the upper echelons of American society. Both powerful men in their own right. The plan is simple. make the switch. reignite the cold war. from the inside.

Dan Fesperman on the Return of Claire Saylor

 

Claire Saylor, the American protagonist of my new spy novel, The Cover Wife, is the sort of character who is always pushing boundaries and breaking rules to find out things she's not supposed to know. She can sneak up on you that way. Give her a small role to play and she'll turn it into a bigger one, even if you're the writer who created her.

My initial authorly assumption about Claire was that she would be a minor character in my previous novel, Safe Houses. I figured she'd be useful for a few key scenes in her home city of Paris, where she was a CIA operative in 1979. Then I'd say goodbye, dispatching her to that vague netherworld where underused characters go to wait -- usually in vain -- for their next casting call. For many authors, that's a crowded place that we don't often care to visit, lest we do something embarrassing like forget someone's name, or the time when we first encountered them.

"What do you mean you don't remember me? I saved your ass on that climactic scene in your first novel!"

"Yes, well, can I get you a drink, maybe? Oh, and have you met this lovely person over here, uh, his name's right on the tip of my tongue..."

Claire refused to go to that room. Much in the same way she takes advantage of her dismissive station chiefs, exploiting their lack of attention, she began insinuating herself into one additional scene after another. I warmed to her company. She was enjoyable to write, smart and witty, and the next thing I knew she had become a full-blown sidekick. She even forced her way into the final scenes of the book's other plot line, a sequence of events occurring thirty-five years later.

Her performance was so compelling that I decided she'd earned a starring role in The Cover Wife, so here she is, working a case (or maybe, as she soon learns, two of them at once, with layers of meaning that must be unpeeled one at a time) in Hamburg in 1999, at a time when a few impassioned young Islamic radicals were just beginning to think big and bold about the mark they might be able to make in the West, as long as no one found out what they were up to.

You'll also find her in my next book, Winter Work, in which shell be working for the CIA in Berlin in 1990, four months after the Wall came down. But that, as they say, is another story. (I've only completed the first draft, with plenty of work remaining, so please be patient with me).

Yet, I certainly don't see Claire as a "series" character. In fact, it feels like a bit of a stretch to even characterize these books as a Claire Saylor Trilogy. That's partly because, for all her success in claiming a bigger role in Safe Houses, she still wasn't the main character. Those roles belonged to a young CIA operative named Helen Abell (who, by the way, has an important cameo in The Cover Wife), and to a couple of other folks. And in the book yet to come, Winter Work, she will share center stage with a scene-stealing old hand from the Stasi's foreign intelligence branch, a fellow named Emil Grimm.Also, it isn't as if these books are chronological. If you were to plot out Claire Saylor's life as portrayed in these three successive novels, you'd realize that they cover four parts of her career, and do quite a bit of jumping around in the process. Safe Houses, set in 1979 and 2014, gives you Parts 1 and 4, The Cover Wife (1999), gives you Part 3. Winter Work (1990), will give you Part 2.

Haphazard? Not really. It's simply the way her life's story evolved in the telling of these tales. I think of the non-chronological nature of these books as being more in the way that longtime friends, seated at a bar, will swap memorable old tales from their past as they drink, hopping inevitably from one year to the other, in no fixed order.

In Claire's case, at least she still has a place at the table, instead of moldering in that back room with all those characters whose names I've forgotten. Because, obviously, I'm intrigued by her. My hope now is that you'll enjoy her company as much as I have.

‘The Cover Wife’ by Dan Fesperman is published by Head of Zeus on 6th July

Paris, October 1999. CIA agent Claire Saylor's career has stalled, thanks to unorthodox behaviour in her past. So when she's told she'll be going undercover in Hamburg to pose as the wife of an academic who has published a controversial interpretation of the Quran's promise to martyrs, she assumes the job is a punishment. But when she discovers her team leader is Paul Bridger, another Agency maverick, she realises there may be more to this mission than meets the eye - and not just for professional reasons.  Meanwhile, Mahmoud, a recent Moroccan émigré in Hamburg, has become involved with a group of radicals at his local mosque. The deeper he's drawn into the group, the more he is torn between his obligations to them and his feelings toward a beautiful westernized Muslim woman. As Claire learns the truth about her mission, and Mahmoud grows closer to the radicals, their paths are on a collision course that could have disastrous repercussions far beyond the CIA.

More information about Dan Fesperman and his books can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @DanFesperman

Kjell Ola Dahl on The Courier

The Courier is about a murder in a country at war. One of my earlier crime novels, The Man in the Window, also featured the occupation of Norway during WWII, and when I was doing my research I learned a lot about how the German authorities delivered justice and coped with crime in the country. It was partly this research that inspired The Courier, in which the murder victim is closely connected with the resistance movement. My initial idea was that the investigation into such a crime – at such a time – would automatically be influenced by politics; and I liked how a search for truth would inevitably be infected by lies. 

Another inspiration for The Courier was the Norwegian Holocaust; I particularly wanted to write about the fact that it was planned, organised and performed solely by Norwegian Nazis. The Germans were not involved in the arrests; their involvement only started with the transportation of Jews from Norway to Auschwitz. 

The choice of 1942 as one of the timeframes for the book was therefore natural, as the arrest of the Jews and their transport from Norway to the gas chambers was conducted in the autumn of that year, and at the same time, a lot of Norwegian Jews escaped. 1942 is also one of the most interesting years of WWII, because it was then that Hitler made his fatal decision to attack the Soviet Union, an invasion that had serious implications for the resistance movement in Norway. 

What I really wanted to do with this book was write a story of revenge. I like to think that people's choices are affected by things that have happened to them previously in their lives – it’s a Freudian thing. I wanted to explore how things that happened during WWII had implications for the characters much later. But I also wanted the present day to feature in the book, so I decided my protagonist had to around twenty in 1942. In the sixties she would be in her forties, which I liked, because she is mature by then, has developed a stronger will, but at the same time she is not old and could therefore still be searching for a direction in her life. 

Ester as a character was mainly inspired by a man I once knew. His family were all killed in the gas chambers, but he managed to flee – first to Sweden in 1942, then to Scotland, where he was trained as a saboteur. He was then sent on commando raids behind enemy lines in Norway. However, I was more interested in his personality than his wartime history, as I did not want to write a soldier’s tale, and that is one of the reasons I decided my protagonist had to be a woman. I also liked how her gender made her somewhat distant from me, the writer; it made her more mysterious. 

I chose the other main timeline to be 1967. The sixties reflect the forties in one way: there was a war then too, but it was a cold war, with new frontlines. Twenty-five years have passed since 1942, and those years have affected all the characters in various ways. Ester’s life after WWII is a mystery, as is Gerhard's life after the war, and the lives of Markus and Sverre. 

Writing about the same characters in two layers of time – one when they are younger, idealistic and a bit innocent, and one when they all are shaped by life – was truly inspirational. I found they were all different people in 1967 from the ones they were in 1942. I had to explore what had happened to them after 1942, what directions their lives had taken, and of course how the fate of Åse – the murder victim in 1942 – had shaped the people they eventually become. 

The Courier by Kjell Ola Dahl (Published by Orenda Press)

In 1942, Jewish courier Ester is betrayed, narrowly avoiding arrest by the Gestapo. In a great haste, she escapes to Sweden, saving herself. Her family in Oslo, however, is deported to Auschwitz. In Stockholm, Ester meets the resistance hero, Gerhard Falkum, who has left his little daughter and fled both the Germans and allegations that he murdered his wife, Ase, who helped Ester get to Sweden. Their burgeoning relationship ends abruptly when Falkum dies in a fire.  And yet, twenty-five years later, Falkum shows up in Oslo. He wants to reconnect with his daughter. But where has he been, and what is the real reason for his return? Ester stumbles across information that forces her to look closely at her past, and to revisit her war-time training to stay alive...

In Memoriam

22 February 1956 – 23 March 2018

© Shotsmag.co.uk 

On Friday 23^rd March 2018 the crime writing community were notified of the sad death of Scottish crime writer Philip Kerr by his wife novelist Jane Thynne via Twitter.

Philip Kerr was best known for his Bernie Gunther novels with the first one in the series March Violets being published in 1989. March Violets introduced readers to his sardonic, tough talking former soldier who fought in World War I on the Turkish Front and also an ex-cop. Gunther went on to work as a private eye in the pre World War II. The series blended fact and fiction and set mostly in Berlin, as Gunther carried out investigations against the backdrop of the rise of the Nazis, whose reach he is always trying to escape.

In March Violets Bernhard Gunther is a private eye, specializing in missing persons. And in Hitler's Berlin, he's never short of work... Winter 1936. A man and his wife shot dead in their bed. The woman's father, a millionaire industrialist, wants justice - and the priceless diamonds that disappeared along with his daughter's life.  As Bernie follows the trail into the very heart of Nazi Germany, he's forced to confront a horrifying conspiracy.

March Violets was followed by The Pale Criminal which was published in 1990 and A German Requiem in 1991. The first three novels later became known as The Berlin Trilogy and were published as such in 2012. 

In 1992 his standalone novel A Philosophical Investigation was published.  Set in London 2013: a world in which serial murder has reached epidemic proportions.

Tested positively by the government as one disposed to criminal violence, a serial killer breaks into the computer to erase his name, where he discovers a list of others so accused and hits on the horrifying idea: what if he were to become a killer of serial killers? A Philosophical Investigation was well received on publication with the narrative unfolding from a dual perspective. The killer's being told in first person and the detective's is told in third.

 

This was followed in 1993 with Dead Meat and Gridiron in 1995,  The Shot in 1999, Dark Matter (2002), Hitler’s Peace (2012) amongst others.  The most recent standalone being The Most Frightening Story Ever Told in 2016.

He returned to the Bernie Gunther novels after a 15 year gap with The One From the Other in 2006.  This was followed by A Quiet Flame (2008), If the Dead Rise Not (2009), Field Grey (2010), Prague Fatale (2011), A Man Without Breath (2013), The Lady from Zagreb (2015), The Other Side of Silence (2016) and Prussian Blue in 2017. His novel If The Dead Not Rise won the Crime Writers Association Ellis Peters Historical Award in 2009 as well as the Premio RBA de Novela Negra. It also won the Barry Award for Best British Novel.  The novels Field Grey, The Lady of Zaregb and Prussian Blue were all shortlisted for an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2012, 2016 and 2018 respectively. 

© Shotsmag.co.uk (Philip Kerr & Jane Wood)

The latest book in the Bernie Gunther series Greeks Bearing Gifts is due to be published in April this year.  In Greeks Bearing Gifts, it is Munich, 1956. Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder, and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages “Christoph Ganz” to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece.  Under the cover of his new identity, Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel’s claimed losses are large , and, even worse, they may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place.  Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognises in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war. Back then, a young Leventis suspected an S.S. officer whose connection to the German government made him untouchable. He’s kept that man’s name in his memory all these years, waiting for his second chance at justice…  Working together, Leventis and Bernie hope to put their cases–new and old–to bed. But there’s a much more sinister truth to acknowledge: A killer has returned to Athens…one who may have never left.

© Shotsmag.co.uk  (Janet Ellis, Philip Kerr & Mike Ripley)

Between 2014 and 2015 three books in the Scott Manson thriller series were also written. The first in the series January Window (2014) introduced readers to Scott Manson a team coach for a London football club and all-round fixer. This was followed by Hand of God and False Nine both in 2015.

   

He was also wrote children’s novels using the name P B Kerr as well as a number of non-fiction books under his own name.

Over the years Shots have reviewed a number of his books including The Other Side of Silence, Hand of God, The Lady of Zaregb, A Man Without Breath, Prague Fatale and Field Grey. 

According to his publishers Quercus, Philip finished a fourteenth Bernie Gunther novel Metropolis, which will be published in the UK and US next year

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A 2011 interview on the Shots website can be found here. The Guardian have also reported on his death.

His passing is a great loss to so many; his family, authors and readers.  He will be solely missed.