TEN FAVOURITE AUTHORS OF SECOND WORLD WAR FICTION

These are ten of my favourite authors who have written fiction set before, during, and after the Second World War.

I should stress that this is a list of personal favourites. Several excellent writers are not included here, and I may come back to some of them in a later post.

Alex Gerlis

Unlike some writers, Alex Gerlis does not rely on a single recurring hero, nor does he always revisit the same locations and themes. The first series of his that I read was Spy Masters, beginning with The Best of Our Spies. It is a complex and gripping tale with a genuinely surprising ending. I was completely taken aback by the conclusion.

After that, I read the rest of the series and then kept going through his work. I can now honestly say I have read almost everything he has written. He is a top-class novelist.

John Lawton

John Lawton has written a number of novels with different characters, but his best-known figure is Frederick Troy, an aristocratic police sergeant we first encounter during the dark days of the London Blitz.

It has been many years since I first read Black Out, the opening Troy novel, but it remains a fine detective story. The books that followed have maintained the same high quality.

Elizabeth Wein

Elizabeth Wein is an American author who specialises in young adult fiction. She is not, strictly speaking, a specialist in World War II fiction, but one of her finest novels is Code Name Verity, set in occupied France.

Readers should be warned: this is a tough read, but it is also deeply moving and convincing in its depiction of a secret agent working under the threatening gaze of the Gestapo.

Allan Massie

Allan Massie is a prolific Scottish author whose novels set in occupied France are of the highest quality. The first one I read was Death in Bordeaux.

The plot is intricate and fascinating, but for me the central interest lay in the interaction between the policeman hero and the occupying Germans, especially the Gestapo. There are several follow-ups to Death in Bordeaux, all of them strong.

James Holland

James Holland writes both fiction and non-fiction, all focused on the Second World War. He is both a highly regarded novelist and a military historian of real distinction.

I have recently finished The Burning Blue, first published more than twenty years ago and centred on the Battle of Britain. Never before have I felt so strongly that I was sitting in the cockpit of a Spitfire. The dogfights of summer and early autumn 1940 are described with frightening realism. Alongside the air combat runs a love story, and the painful story of life on a Wiltshire farm under the pressures of war.

Philip Kerr

The late, great Philip Kerr is best known for his Bernie Gunther novels. We first meet Bernie in March Violets as a detective in Berlin. The first three novels were collected by Penguin under the title Berlin Noir.

The series follows Bernie through the war years and into the difficult years that followed. There are fourteen Bernie novels in all, a remarkable sequence cut short by Kerr’s tragic early death in March 2018.

David Downing

David Downing’s novels feature two fascinating characters: John Russell, a former Communist Party member and journalist in pre-war Berlin, and Effie Koenen, a celebrated actress closely linked to the legendary Ufa Studios.

Each of the eight novels includes a station name in the title, beginning with Zoo Station. Effie’s film career allows Downing to introduce real historical figures, including Joseph Goebbels, whose interest in cinema had more to do with propaganda than artistic quality.

Jane Thynne

Jane Thynne, widow of Philip Kerr, is an outstanding novelist who has written a variety of fine books, including several set in the years leading up to the Second World War and during the conflict itself.

Midnight in Vienna is one of her most recent novels. Reading it reminded me how well she can seize and hold a reader’s attention.

David Young

David Young, a Yorkshireman, first came to prominence with novels set in East Germany during the grim years of the German Democratic Republic. That series now appears complete, and he has turned his attention to the Second World War, especially its impact on his home city of Kingston upon Hull.

Death in Blitz City is, so far, the only book in what many readers hope will become a new series.

Rory Clements

Rory Clements has created a very engaging hero in Tom Wilde. Wilde is an American whom we first meet as a Cambridge don. Somehow he becomes entangled in espionage, and his life is frequently at risk.

Corpus was the first Tom Wilde novel, published in 2016. There is a great deal to like in these books, not least Wilde himself. They are full of excitement and intrigue.

Final Thought

Please do not think that my reading is confined to the Second World War. I do, however, read widely around that period so I can avoid any risk of plagiarism in my own writing.

My other favourites include detective fiction and biography/autobiography. I have recently finished We Did OK, Kid by Anthony Hopkins.