“Superb….the story comes alive again in all its stupendous, unimaginable duplicity.…intensely readable” Employing a wry wit and a keen eye for detail, he delivers an ultimately winning tale fraught with European intrigue and subtle wartime heroics.” “ complex, absorbing final installment in his trilogy about World War II espionage….Macintyre is a master storyteller. “Macintyre at once exalts and subverts the myths of spycraft, and has a keen eye for absurdity.” It is a story unsurpassed in the long history of intelligence.” Ben Macintyre’s factual account is more gripping than what you will find anywhere else. “Forget fiction when you are buying beach reading this summer. He takes us into a world of bounders, spivs, roués, and men (and women) on the make…. “It should be said loud and clear that Macintyre is a supremely gifted storyteller. “Gripping stories from the perspective of a remarkable ragtag group of spies who tricked the Nazis in an astounding D-Day deception. With the same depth of research, eye for the absurd, and masterful storytelling that have made Ben Macintyre an international bestseller, Double Cross is a captivating narrative of the spies who wove a web so intricate it ensnared Hitler’s army and carried thousands of D-Day troops across the Channel in safety. This epic event has never before been told from the perspective of the key individuals in the Double Cross system, until now. These include its director (a brilliant, urbane intelligence officer), a colorful assortment of MI5 handlers (as well as their counterparts in Nazi intelligence), and the five spies who formed Double Cross’s nucleus: a dashing Serbian playboy, a Polish fighter-pilot, a bisexual Peruvian party girl, a deeply eccentric Spaniard, and a volatile Frenchwoman. Together they made up one of the oddest and most brilliant military units ever assembled. It was the most sophisticated and successful deception operation ever carried out, ensuring Allied victory at the most pivotal moment in the war. Operation Fortitude, which protected and enabled the invasion, and the Double Cross system, which specialized in turning German spies into double agents, tricked the Nazis into believing that the Allied attacks would come in Calais and Norway rather than Normandy.

A stunning military achievement, it was also a masterpiece of trickery.

On June 6, 1944, 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and suffered an astonishingly low rate of casualties. “Not since Ian Fleming and John le Carré has a spy writer so captivated readers.”- The Hollywood Reporter

The “superb intensely readable” ( The Washington Post) untold story of one of the greatest deceptions of World War II and the extraordinary spies who achieved it-from the bestselling author of Prisoners of the Castle.

Double cross macintyre