Betrayal

Caught between empires, a young woman risks her life for Ireland

Mary Ellen Fraser speeds down the lonely country road, aware that no matter how fast she drives, she cannot outrun the secret in her heart. In the POW camps of Northern Ireland, this doctor’s wife found a lover—a handsome German officer who begged her to smuggle a letter to his cousin. But the cousin is a lie, and the note is really an encoded message for Admiral Dönitz, high commander of the Nazi fleet. Not only has Mary betrayed her husband, she has betrayed Britain, as well.

When she discovers the consequences of her unwitting bit of espionage, Mary does everything she can to undo the damage. Trapped between Britain, Germany, and the merciless Irish Republican Army, Mary is the only person who can keep the Nazis from landing in Ireland.

J. Robert Janes (b. 1935) is a mystery author best known for writing historical thrillers. Born in Toronto, he holds degrees in mining and geology, and worked as an engineer, university professor, and textbook author before he started writing fiction. He began his career as a novelist by writing young adult books, starting with The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War (1976). He wrote his last young adult novel, Murder in the Market, in 1985, by which time he had begun writing for adults, starting with the four-novel Richard Hagen series.

In 1992, Janes published Mayhem, the first in the long-running St-Cyr and Kohler series, for which he is best known. These police procedurals set in Nazi-occupied France have been praised for the author’s attention to historical detail, as well as their swift-moving plots. The thirteenth in the series, Bellringer, was published in 2012.