And so begins a tense race between the resistance cell moving Frank across the country and the authorities trying to track them down until the thrilling ending.

Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, secretly acting as a spy for the Resistance, is given the mission by them to rescue his old friend Frank and get him out of the country. If Britain did surrender, things should have been much worse for them, here I must say the author was lenient. Everything is under supreme control, with the likes of the press, radio and tv, streets are patrolled by violent police, and all this and ever greater constraints the British will have to endure.

The story is interesting enough but the real interest is the world Sansom weaves in the what if scenario. I began to wonder if the author was being paid by the word like Dickens because there was so much irrelevant background. Ah my friend, sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we had not made peace with the Germans in 1940. Real events like Great Smog of 1952 are woven it to ramp up the threatening atmosphere and clever details about the alternate1950s are grafted on to real ones, such as British Corner Houses replacing Lyons Corner Houses (Joe Lyons was, of course, Jewish). In a novel which imagines a Nazi-dominated Britain in 1952, it is quite clear that Sansom is positing that Scotland's future might be dark and twisted.

Instead of fighting on alone, Britain too accepts an armistice with Germany, falling under her sphere of influence with the Isle of Wight annexed to the German Army. It’s distinctly alt-reality with Britain having surrendered to Germany, leaving the Nazi regime largely in control post WWII Europe. But despite being long, the novel is always a page turner and I'm always slightly despondent when it ends as I know that it'll be another couple of years before another one comes out. Historical fiction is always a challenge but to use a historical setting which you twist from reality is on another level.Nonetheless, we have to read long conversations with David's wife's sister discussing her concerns, and long introspections while she tries to make up her mind. In real history there was Finland, an ally of Germany in the war against Russia, but one that preserved its democratic polity and refused to play any part in the Holocaust. And watching the various conflicting forces come together towards a climactic midnight encounter on a deserted pebble beach, I was only too aware that by adjusting a gunshot here or there, the author could bring it to whatever conclusion he wanted. It turns out that Muncaster is the sort of fellow that a goose would say boo to, so his actions, to say the least, are just a tad out of character.

Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers, and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk.

Sarah Fitzgerald obviously cared deeply for her husband and it's a shame the love wasn't reciprocated. The only thing that made this less than absolutely perfect was some of the amateurish things that the Germans did towards the end - I forgave the author though as I have so much love for the rest of the book.

Sansom makes him such a sad, forlorn soul it was hard not to feel sorry for him and want to give him a big hug. One of the main story threads revolves around Frank Muncaster and a secret his brother, Edgar tells him, a secret that causes mild, timid Frank to push his brother out a window and apparently go insane which lands him in a mental asylum. I rather enjoyed the slow build up of tension in the beginning part of the book - I know that's probably an unusual personal taste. If so, I imagine it was rejected many times over for the perceived faults that I'll go into here and other reviewers have commented on. Why on earth would the Germans have erected tariff barriers against British produce when such produce, particularly in armaments, would have been vital for the continuing campaign in the east?I love David as a character, and I'm sad that the relationship with his wife before the death of their son, Charlie, wasn't explored more deeply. Under the Treaty of Berlin, which ended the western war, the Isle of Wight has been turned over to Germany as a base.