Spandau Phoenix

The Spandau Diary — what was in it? Why did the secret intelligence agencies of every major power want it? Why was a brave and beautiful woman kidnapped to get it? Why did a chain of deception and violent death lash out across the globe, from survivors of the Nazi past to warriors in this new conflict about to explode? Why did the world's entire history of World War II have to be rewritten as the future hung over a nightmare abyss?

In an adventure- and suspense-filled novel, Iles answers the greatest remaining mystery of World War II in a lightning-fast tale that ranks with the works of Follett and Ludlum. Amongst the rubble of Spandau Prison, the diary of enigmatic Nazi Rudolph Hess is found, and the secrets it reveals plunge the world into chaos.

Fiche Technique

• Titre : Spandau Phoenix
• ISBN-13: 9780451179807
• Author : Greg Iles
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
• Publication date: 04/28/1994

Editorial Reviews - From Barnes & Noble

Put Nazis in a thriller and you've got me almost every time. Spandau Phoenix is one of my favorites to star those swastika-wearing scumbags. The fascinating thing about this book, it focuses on a real-life occurrence -- one of WWII's greatest mysteries in fact. Why did Rudolf Hess, Hitler's right-hand man, embark on a daring solo flight to England? Intense excitement laced with historical intrigue at its best. --Andrew LeCount

Publishers Weekly

Stock characters and melodramatic plotting mar this first novel, which posits a Rudolf Hess impostor imprisoned in Spandau while the real Nazi remains free, working from a secret South African stronghold to keep Hitler's legacy alive. In 1987, soon after the fake Hess dies in his jail cell, 27-year-old German police sergeant Hans Apfel accidentally discovers a sheaf of yellow documents amid the rubble of the recently demolished Spandau prison. Hans takes the mysterious papers to his wife Ilse who, with her father, a history professor, translates the Spandau Papers, as they come to be known, from their original Latin. What they uncover is a plot begun in 1941 involving Hitler, Hess, his SS-trained double and Nazi sympathizers in the House of Parliament, to kill Churchill and replace him with the appeasing Duke of Windsor. When word of the existence of the papers--which may indicate a present-day neo-Nazi/South African plan to annihilate Israel--gets out, KGB agents, the East German secret police and a rogue Mossad agent race to locate them. Though clearly written, with some entertaining speculation, this effort is overwhelmed by cliches. Author tour. (May)

Meet the Author

Greg Iles gained notice for his smart, what-if storylines based on World War II scenarios; but when he turned to his own territory to write suspenseful, modern crime stories set in the American South, that's when readers really sat up and took notice.

Greg Iles has led a sort of double life as a novelist. His first books, based on extrapolations from real events in World War II, earned him an initial following, but his very modern crime novels are what currently hold his -- and his readers' -- focus. His tight pacing and chilling, innovative concepts have made him especially attractive to Hollywood, which has optioned and/or expressed interest in several of his books.

Iles's first novel, Spandau Phoenix, was about the secret escape of a Nazi soldier and the chilling plot related in his discovered diaries. It was a mixed success critically, earning praise for its premise but low marks on style. Since then, Iles has clearly developed as a novelist, and branched out in themes too.

With his second novel, Black Cross, Iles displayed more of a voice and more streamlined plotting in his story of a conspiracy to use the Nazi's own weapons against them. Those first two titles did become bestsellers; but by the time Iles shifted gears to write crime thrillers set in his native Mississippi, he found himself getting even more attention -- and better reviews. His next two books, Mortal Fear and The Quiet Game, remain his personal favorites. Iles was born in Stuttgart, Germany, where his father was in charge of the medical clinic at the U.S. Embassy, in 1961. He graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983 and played guitar in a rock band for several years before trying his hand at writing novels.

Moving from screenplays to thrillers to speculative historical fiction, Iles continues to stretch as a writer. He also indulges his love for music (he once played guitar in the band Frankly Scarlet) by performing with the Rock Bottom Remainders, an author side project that includes writers Stephen King, Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, and Amy Tan

Good To Know

After graduation from college, Iles worked as an x-ray and lab technician for his father, dug ditches, and worked as a professional guitarist and singer.

Iles has the ability to be gloomily prophetic, but not intentionally. In an online chat in 1997, a fan pointed out that some real-life Internet-related murders had followed his Mortal Fear. Iles responded: "A lot of my books have been that way. My World War II thriller about Sarin gas [Black Cross] was published two months before the Sarin attack in the Japanese subway. There are very weird coincidences out there. And I do have one surefire plot I have not and probably never will write, because of my fear someone will carry it out."

Iles's wife is a high-school sweetheart whom he married when he was 29.