Gotta love a good adventure story (especially when it's true)

Reading Operation Mincemeat has just convinced me that there are 1. Many more spy novels out there that I have yet to read (example: Ian Fleming) and 2. My obsession with World War II is completely justified because it was so convoluted, intriguing, and shrouded in secrecy (many of these secrets remain today). As the title suggests, this book focused on a singular operation which in itself was just a piece of a much bigger operation entitled Operation Husky (attached to another called Operation Barclay + others that were mere decoys). If nothing else, once you've finished reading this book you come away with an appreciation for the skills and ingenuity of those involved in fighting a war which for the majority of its duration seemed absolutely impossible to win. The taking of Sicily, however, proved to be a turning point in the war and Ewen Montagu and his team had a hand in the victory because they pulled off what many still believe to be the greatest feat of deception ever. If you've ever read The Man Who Never Was or seen the film version of it then you're aware of this story...except it's not the entire story because Montagu was censored by the British government (you'll see why when you read Operation Mincemeat). Sufficed to say, if you've ever fancied yourself a spy then you should read this to find out just exactly what that means. Hint: It's a lot more bureaucracy than James Bond has led you to believe.

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann has been on my TRL for a while now. It's the story of a man's quest to figure out what really happened to Percy Fawcett and his expedition party. This question has haunted hundreds of people who have tried to discover the truth by following the clues left behind by the man into the very place that seems to have swallowed him alive. In 1925 Fawcett and his team (including his 21 year old son) set off on a quest to locate the lost city of El Dorado, aka Z. Now it's David Grann's turn to be enthralled by the mystery as he seeks to discover just what happened to Fawcett and his team and maybe find El Dorado himself...

It always comes back to death and WWII with me

I practically sped through The Removers by Andrew Meredith. As I had suspected (and you probably did too based on the synopsis), this is a memoir fraught with melancholy. After his world was turned on its head at the age of 14, Andrew was adrift without purpose...that is until he found that he was quite good at the business of death. (I made that sound like he was an expert assassin but in reality he was ensconced in the world of corpse removal and cremation.)  For twenty years, this was his livelihood and it seemed that even when he moved clear across the country he couldn't escape it. Was this his destiny? Was the ability to remove himself emotionally from all that went on around him what made him the perfect fit for dealing day in and day out with mortality? Will he rise like the phoenix out of the ashes of cadavers to find himself formed into something utterly unrecognizable from his former self?  What exactly is his former self? To find out the answers to these questions and to learn more about what some might think to be a morbid profession, take a crack at this book.

Because apparently I'm obsessed with WWII and death, I've decided to read Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macintyre. As I mentioned in a previous post regarding Alan Turing, Britain was a major player in the intelligence game during the war. This particular book focuses on a strategic plan to fool the Nazis into thinking that the Allies would be entering Italy through Greece when in fact they would be coming in through Sicily. The problem was that it was known to all parties that Sicily was the most logical choice for an entry point so the ruse had to be very, very good. It was a multifaceted plan but one of the key elements was Operation Mincemeat. The plan was cooked up by two intelligence offers who had very little in common: Ewan Montagu & Charles Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley if you're wondering). The plan was to drop a dead body disguised as an officer with falsified documents that would hopefully be turned over to the Germans. Does this sound like a James Bond movie? Well, that's because it was originally thought up by Ian Fleming himself. Yeah, now you're getting why I had to read this book aren't you?

Author's Note: I've read another book by Ben Macintyre and if you're interested in reading about that one you can go here.