Where the Light Stops: A WWII Historical Espionage Thriller (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798180785381)

I waited for you.

Four words engraved on the back of a Royal Navy medal. A grandfather who died in silence after a lifetime spent waiting for someone. A grandson who opens a trunk in a Norfolk attic - and does not yet know he is about to open a war.

Gran Canaria, today. A clock stopped at seven exactly. A forgotten stone house among the dunes of El Salobre. A bundle of letters no one was ever meant to read.

Luke Harris is a retired history professor, widowed three years, a house in Norfolk that still breathes to the rhythm of his wife. When his grandfather James dies, he travels to Gran Canaria believing he is settling an inheritance. He is about to open a great deal more.

In that distant December, James Harris was a young SOE agent - British intelligence - planted among the Nazis sheltering in the Canaries under Franco's protection. He had photographed something that could have changed history. And he had chosen to hide it rather than carry it home.

Eighty years on, someone is still willing to kill to find it. They call him the Spider. He has waited thirty years - his father and grandfather had waited far longer. And now the prey has come of its own accord, walking across the threads of his web.

Among the volcanic caves of Tiritaña, the port of Las Palmas, the Maspalomas lighthouse and a sleeping submarine that official history has forgotten, Luke pieces together, step by step, what his grandfather had sealed away. Beside him is Diego - a local taxi driver, too clever and too wry to be a chance encounter, and too present to remain only a companion in the search.

'The island has its secrets. But it doesn't keep them for ever. It only needs the right moment.'

A historical noir thriller weaving two eras, two men, and a single long Atlantic shadow. A story in which everyone - the grandfather, the grandson, the enemy, the friend who was not yet a friend - is waiting for something or someone.

And each, sooner or later, receives an answer.

A story born of the German presence in the Canary Islands during Franco's supposed neutrality, of the Reich's escape routes to South America, and of the never fully declassified files of the Special Operations Executive.