Whilst I found this book a bit of a challenge to get through, it was well worth persevering. It covers a subject that I have a lot of interest in and there were some fascinating and well written elements to it. Perhaps some of the detail could be edited out to help the flow of the book but other than that, I would recommend it as an interesting read.

Unfortunately this book was incredibly hard work. So much so that I gave up half way through. It wasn't like reading a book or a novel or a story, it was like trying to plough your way through a legal dossier on the world's most complex criminal case. I was really disappointed and I kept trying because I wanted to get into it. From the description it felt like it should be fascinating and gripping, but instead it was baffling and overbearing. Too many names, dates, places, numbers. I guess if you feel like you should have been Sherlock Holmes or a member of the secret intelligence services and have got several hours if not days to unpick it all then it will be a riveting read but not for me, sorry.

Subtitled: The Mysterious Life of Stella Lonsdale

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

This sounded like it would be an interesting read – a story about a female spy that nobody knew which side she was on. I had problems with the execution of the book though, as I’ll explain below.

I had two major problems with this book: it lacked a consistent narrative thread, and it overwhelms readers with irrelevant detail. The combination of these two things made it impossible for me to take any meaning from this book. The narrative skipped back and forth in time, which by itself could have been overcome, but the amount of information dumped on readers increases the books difficulty substantially. Every time a new person gets mentioned, we find out the date and place of birth, their aliases and nicknames, and sometimes the names of the parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. I found myself skimming for pages at a time and not enjoying the book at all. I got about 25% finished before abandoning it.

I gave Agent Provocateur for Hitler or Churchill? two stars. It had a lot of promise, unfortunately I just couldn’t justify investing enough time to finish it.

3.5 stars.
While this era and subject matter is my favorite, I found this book hard to read. It's obviously well researched but it's such an information dump I frequently got lost and had to back up a few pages. It also had to be the sole activity I was doing that day, which was frustrating.

All in all though some amazing material and I'm glad I persevered.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy. My opinions are my own and not influenced by anyone. Ever.