Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

From bestselling author David Downing, master of historical espionage, comes a heart-wrenching depiction of Germany in the days leading up to World War II and the difficult choices of one man of conviction. In April 1938, a man calling himself Josef Hofmann arrives at a boarding house in Hamm, Germany, and lets a room from the widow who owns it. Fifty years later, Walter Gersdorff, the widow’s son, who was eleven years old in the spring of 1938, discovers the carefully hidden diary the boarder had kept during his stay, even though he never should have written any of its contents down. What Walter finds is a chronicle of one the most tumultuous years in German history, narrated by a secret agent on a deadly mission. Josef Hofmann was not the returned Argentinian immigrant he’d said he was--he was a communist spy under Moscow’s command trying to reconnect with remaining members of Germany’s suppressed communist party. Hofmann’s bosses believe the common workers are the only way to stop the German war machine from within. Posing as a railroad man, Hofmann sets out on his game of “Russian roulette,” approaching Hamm’s ex-party members one at a time and delicately feeling out their allegiances. He always knew his mission would most likely end in his death, and he was satisfied to make that sacrifice for the revolution if it could help stop Hitler and his abominable ideology. But as he grows close to the Gersdorffs, accidentally stepping into the role of the father Walter never had, Hofmann begins to wish for another kind of hope in his life.

A Sunday Times Crime Club Starred Pick

Praise for Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

“Downing’s thriller commands our attention until the very last page.” 
—The Wall Street Journal  

“Compelling . . . Like Downing’s deeply researched and convincing Second World War series featuring John Russell, the British journalist-spy, [Diary of a Dead Man on Leave] deals with the war in thrilling fashion.” 
—Toronto Star  

“This powerful, fascinating and touching story not only details the failures of the past, but is also a warning in an age of increasing extremist nationalism, that if people don’t want history to repeat itself, they need to pay greater attention to the actions of their governments. It’s a brilliant, biting read with a message for those who care to see.”
—Crime Review (UK)

“This is a timely, thought provoking novel, historically accurate in all respects. It is one that should not be missed.” 
—Deadly Pleasures Magazine 

“Tingles with suspense.”
—Bayou Catholic Monthly

“The voice [Hofmann's] that emerges is one of a man struggling with the enduring issue that surfaces and resurfaces throughout espionage fiction, from Graham Greene to John le Carré and Alan Furst: loyalty to country versus loyalty to the individual . . . This is a quiet, largely introspective spy novel, very different in mood from Downing's adventure-fueled Jack McColl novels, but it packs an equal if not greater emotional wallop.” 
—Booklist, Starred Review   

“Downing (the John Russell series) has never been better than in this moving and elegiac thriller framed as a diary written by a German calling himself Josef Hofmann . . . Le Carré fans will be pleased.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Praise for David Downing

“[Downing] is a master at bringing the past to life through the careful and often loving observation of even minor players and through the artful deployment of specific detail.”
—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Downing distinguishes himself by eschewing the easy ways out. He doesn't shy away from portraying the cold brutality of the Third Reich, and his characters are far from stereotypes—they're flawed, confused and real.”
—NPR
 
“Downing is brilliant at weaving history and fiction . . . Equally clever and unexpected.”
—Toronto Globe and Mail

Autorentext
David Downing grew up in suburban London. He is the author of the Jack McColl novels, Jack of Spies, One Man’s Flag, Lenin’s Roller Coaster, and The Dark Clouds Shining; the thriller The Red Eagles; and six books in the John Russell espionage series, set in WWII Berlin. He lives with his wife, an American acupuncturist, in Guildford, England.

Leseprobe
SATURDAY, APRIL 23

• It is almost midnight. I am sitting at a small table by an open window, in the north German town of Hamm, writing these first lines. The rest of the house is quiet, but voices rise and fall on the street below, some talking quietly, others loud with drink and the end of a working week.
       It’s now been almost twenty-eight hours since I boarded the overnight train in Rotterdam. The papers I acquired in New York passed inspection at the German frontier; in Cologne, where I changed trains; and at the ticket barrier in Hamm. I took a cab from the station to the district surrounding the railway yards, intending to ask after lodgings in as many bars as I had to, and struck lucky at the first—one of the barmen knew a place nearby where someone had just moved out.
       It was a large house on a T-junction corner, probably a manager’s house in prewar days, when managers still lived among the workers. A canal ran parallel with the upper arm of the T, and beyond that the freight yards stretched away under a haze of smoke. A small Nazi flag hung limply over the front door.
       A boy of around eleven or twelve answered my knock. I asked for Frau Gersdorff, the name I’d been given at the bar, and he stood and stared at me for a few seconds, as if he had trouble understanding. “My mother,” he said eventually. “I’ll fetch her.” Halfway down the hall he stopped, turned, and told me with great seriousness that his name was Walter, as if it was really important that I knew who he was.
       He reappeared a few moments later with a harassed-looking blonde woman in her late thirties or early forties. I introduced myself as Josef Hofmann and agreed to the rent and terms that she briskly outlined. Seeing in my papers that I’d only recently arrived in Germany, she asked where I’d been, and when I said Argentina, she gave me a look that mingled surprise and suspicion in roughly equal measure. I told her it seemed like a good time to return to the fatherland. “Of course,” she murmured, but her eyes said: “What an idiot!”
       She took me up to the vacant room, a large, airy attic with a fine view of the distant hills to the south. Away to the right I could see the railway yards where I was expecting to find work.
       I said it would do. Frau Gersdorff told me that the guests’ bathroom was on the first floor and that supper was served at six-thirty, breakfast at seven. Walter watched from the doorway, and when his mother left, I got the feeling it was only her gentle push that prevented him from staying.
       I unpacked my suitcase, visited the bathroom, and made my way downstairs in search of the promised supper. There I met the first of three—as I later discovered—other lodgers. This one, a thin man of average height with short black hair, sunken eyes, sucked-in cheeks, and a thick black mustache hanging over a small mouth, introduced himself as Aksel Ruchay. He was wea…