First Book Of The Year

Last night I finished a book given to me as a Christmas gift by my son, "Operation Mincemeat" by Ben Macintyre. He read an article in the "New Yorker" and knew I would enjoy the story.  It's about two intelligence men and their staff working for England in World War II. The story has been around, well, since it's been around. Details have been twisted, classified, and distorted and now the truth is told.

Essentially, the Brits get a dead body, dress it as an officer, attach secret memos, and drop it in the water off Spain. The Germans via the Spanish manage to extract the false data in the memos and fall for a ruse that saves lives in an invasion and the Third Reich begins its fall.

In all seriousness, the story is great. What I found amazing was the demonstration of the spy appeartus and its workings. Information about spies in WWII I never heard about, or maybe didn't consider. Either way it was facinating. Today rather than work, I will spend my day searching for other publications describing the spy networks and how they operate.