Whatever the Cost

January 15, 2021
An unorthodox pair of English aristocrats travel to the Continent in 1939 in hopes of sneaking out scientists who are crucial to the war effort. No less an authority than Albert Einstein has written to President Roosevelt urging him to relocate a slew of physicists working in Germany on a fearsome new technology that could create the bomb to end all bombs. So Capt. Jacob Welker, founder of the Office of Special Intelligence, heads into a vortex. So do Lord Geoffrey Saboy and his wife, Patricia, whose irregular domestic arrangements--each one basically provides cover for the other's roving eye--guarantee lightweight complications. When one of Patricia's trysts brings her into possession of a list of parties who've already suffered a high mortality rate, the couple, aided by a cadre of informants horrified by what life under the Third Reich has become, redouble their efforts to track down as many potentially turncoat scientists as possible. Even as they talk to professors Herman and Angela Mittwark, professor Josef Brun, of the Kepler Institute, is already on the run from the Gestapo with some vital scientific papers. Will Brun meet up with the couple seeking to rescue him as part of the retinue of Geoffrey's alter ego Jeffrey the Great's magic act before he disappears himself? Freely mingling real-life heroes and villains with his fictional cast, Kurland resolutely ignores the implications of his title, making wartime intrigue look so easy and fun you may want to try a spot of it yourself in between your own engagements. A good time is had by all but the Gestapo in this knockabout demi-suspenser.

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April 1, 2021
In Kurland's second Welker and Saboy spy thriller (following The Bells of Hell, 2019), it's 1939, and American agent Jacob Welker has been directed by President Roosevelt to extract some German scientists from Berlin before the Nazis corral them into helping develop the ""super weapon"" that Albert Einstein has warned is in the offing (""something to do with atoms and fission""). In Paris, Welker drafts a British husband-and-wife duo of wily, aristocratic spies, Lord Geoffrey and Patricia Saboy, to assist him. So begins a delightfully daft romp in which the Saboys do most of the sleuthing, combining banter and booze in a manner that suggests Nick and Nora with a splash of Noel Coward and a nod toward Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence. Plenty of sex, too, or, at least, sexual chitchat, as Geoffrey and Patricia discuss their various appetites (he's gay; she's just, well, horny). Yes, there's some suspense along the way, with the Saboys making use of their experience as magicians to whisk the scientists out of harm's way, but this is more frothy than frightening, no easy trick given the presence of the Gestapo.

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