Book Review: The DeValera Deception (Winston Churchill Thrillers) by Michael McMenamin & Patrick McMenamin

Hard-nosed, unsanitized historical depiction of fictional events where no person or topic is held sacrosanct, revolving elliptically around Sir Winston Churchill with emphasis on his "despised" American heritage. Replete with uncompromising brutality - lots of gore, sex, rape, hatred; bigotry against Catholics, bias against Americans and disdain for the Irish by the British, In turn, Herbert Hoover, derisively portrayed as the "engineer" president, comes across as cold-hearted and insensitive toward the cause of an Ireland struggling for freedom.

Perhaps, during that time, all these may have been a version of reality after all.

Money, mistresses, estates and grandeur were king. Alan Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" quote apparently came three quarters of a century too late. In the book, even the chambermaid was invested in stocks.

Gone the affable, double-chinned, rotund person famous for his speeches; enter an energized, materialistic version, working dollars for newspaper articles, though still ubiquitous, the cigars and the man's alcoholism. Churchill plays a bit role, albeit manipulative and critical to the story. Think "The Eagle Has Landed", except the setting is in America and the villains are Irish of the brutal, internecine type plus pre-Hitler Germans. Oberst Kurt Steiner, heroic paratrooper-leader, is replaced by Kurt von Sturm, aspiring Zeppelin pilot.

Eamon DeValera, "Long Fellow", natural born American of Basque-Irish heritage, for all the grandeur of the title of the book, appears only on a few pages, almost as an historical footnote, even less than his arch rival and Minister of Finance, Michael Collins, "Big Fellow".

The strength of the book is in the orchestration by the authors of events and the fog of fiction and reality into an ensemble attuned in harmony, with the main protagonists, Bourke Cockran Jr., a law professor and former spy, and Mattie McGary, fictional goddaughter of the legendary P.M., barreling through the plot with Churchill, William Randolph Hearst, Hoover, the "Apostles" and a cast of historically true figures, interacting in the background.

Beyond the aggrandizement of the title, creative speculation and political controversy, the book is an intriguing first-class thriller with those essential dollops of power and greed particularly of men in government, the global finance and military industrial complex, and, representing the media, in a class by himself, W. R. Hearst.

Review based on an advance reading copy presented by NetGalley and First Edition Design Publishing.

"The DeValera Deception" eBook was published in 2018 (the original paper edition was published in 2010) and was written by Michael McMenamin and Patrick McMenamin (http://www.winstonchurchillthrillers.com). Mr. McMenamin has published seven novels and this is the first in their “Winston Churchill 1930s Thriller” series.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Situations. The story is set across North America in 1929.

Winston Churchill is traveling across Canada and the US. The Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, asks him to discretely approach President Herbert Hoover to get assistance in stopping the sale of arms to the IRA. While a team of SIS agents is dispatched to investigate, Churchill decides to rely on his own resources. He recruits his goddaughter, Mattie McGary, who is a reporter for the Hearst newspapers and Bourke Cockran a lawyer and son of one of Churchill's former mentors.

While Cockran develops a strong love interest in McGary, he also mistrusts her and Hearst. The two are able to discover quite a bit about the IRA plot, but they find themselves in dangerous situations time and again. Cockran is distracted by the presence in the US of the IRA agent responsible for the death of his first wife. He struggles to keep his focus on the arms deal instead of seeking revenge.

I thoroughly enjoyed the 9.5 hours I spent reading this 415 page period thriller. I liked the characters of Cockran and McGary, as well as the real historical figures that the authors have woven into the story. I like the cover art selected for the novel. I give this novel a 4.5 (rounded up to a 5) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

A wonderful first book in a thrilling series involving Winston Churchill. Highly recommended for fans of historical fiction, mysteries and the esteemed Prime Minister himself. 5/5

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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