Jack Higgins · 1986 · thriller
Jack Higgins's 1986 thriller. A disastrous D-Day rehearsal off the Devon coast leaves an American officer who knows the invasion plans washed up on German-occupied Jersey. London has weeks to get him back or silence him, and sends in an agent posing as an SS officer - into an island where everyone knows everyone, and a field marshal is expected.
- 1London
In the spring of 1944, with the invasion weeks away, SHAEF discovers that an officer carrying the full Overlord plan in his head is missing after an exercise gone wrong - and that he is almost certainly not dead.
- 2Slapton Sands
The rehearsal off Slapton Sands in Devon is caught by German torpedo boats and turns into a massacre, and among the men in the water is Hugh Kelso, who drifts away in a life raft rather than drowning with the rest.
- 3Jersey
Kelso comes ashore on German-occupied Jersey and is hidden by islanders who could be shot for it - and the agent Harry Martineau is landed after him in the uniform of an SS Standartenfuhrer, to bring him out or make sure of him.
- 4Granville
The way off the island runs through the German garrison and across to the Normandy coast at Granville, with a field marshal's visit complicating everything - and the whole invasion resting on one man's silence.