The Saboteur
A Novel
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4.4 • 54 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Based on the true story of Operation Gunnerside—the Britain-sponsored mission that sent Norwegian commandos into the Nazi-occupied Telemark region of their country to destroy the enemy’s nuclear weapons program—New York Times bestselling author Andrew Gross’s The Saboteur is a riveting World War II thriller of espionage and action.
February, 1943. Both the Allies and the Nazis are closing in on attempts to construct the decisive weapon of the war.
Kurt Nordstrum, an engineer in Oslo, puts his life aside to take up arms against the Germans as part of the Norwegian resistance. After the loss of his fiancée, and with his outfit whittled to shreds, he commandeers a coastal steamer and escapes to England to transmit secret evidence of the Nazis’s progress towards an atomic bomb at an isolated factory in Norway. There, he joins a team of dedicated Norwegians in training in the Scottish Highlands for a mission to disrupt the Nazis’ plans before they advance any further.
Parachuted onto the most unforgiving terrain in Europe, braving the fiercest of mountain storms, Nordstrum and his team attempt the most daring raid of the war, targeting the heavily-guarded factory built on a shelf of rock thought to be impregnable, a mission even they know they likely will not survive. Months later, Nordstrum is called upon again to do the impossible, opposed by both elite Nazi soldiers and a long-standing enemy who is now a local collaborator—one man against overwhelming odds, with the fate of the war in the balance, but the choice to act means putting the one person he has a chance to love in peril.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For this average WWII thriller, bestseller Gross (The One Man) draws on the true story of the efforts of a small team of Norwegian patriots to halt the Nazi program to build an atomic bomb by sabotaging heavy water production at a remote factory in Norway. The book's sluggish first half centers on the team's preparation for the mission and the wait for an ideal insertion moment. The second half also contains long periods of relative inactivity, though the action picks up whenever the valiant Norwegians encounter the Germans and their supporters, the Hirden of the Nasjonal Samling party. In an author's note, Gross reveals that his lead, Kurt Nordstrom, is based on a real participant in the raids on the Norsk Hydro factory and Mael ferry, but Nordstrom comes across as a caricature of the hardy and capable hero. Nordstrom's primary foe, Capt. Dieter Lund of the Hird, is similarly a stock villain. Still, history buffs may appreciate the skill with which Gross combines fact and fiction. 125,000-copy announced first printing; author tour.)
