Last Boat to Cadiz

Rating:
Summary: Thriller Diller!
Review: Five minutes ago I finished reading "Last Boat to Cadiz" by Barnaby Conrad. It's a book of the same genre as "The Da Vinci Code," a favorite genre I call, "The Book You Can't Put Down."

Mr. Conrad seizes the reader's interest on page one and doesn't let go until page 250. His story takes place in the latter days of WWII. Germany's Third Reich is crumbling, Hitler's suicide has been reported, his chief henchmen are all dead or captured.

All except one. This high-level fugitive is trying to make his way out of France, across Spain to Cadiz, where he hopes to escape via German submarine to South America.

The book's hero, Wilson Tripp, is a Vice Consul working in Seville. Early in the book his path crosses that of the Nazi escapee, and he is forced at gunpoint to assist in the escape. He soon finds himself on the Cayetana, a grubby 40-foot boat carrying a mixed bag of passengers down the Guadalquivir River to Cadiz. As you, too, board the Cayetana with this doomed group, your heart will start pumping overtime. It won't quit till the ride ends.

Most of the action takes place in Andalucia, an area of southern Spain the author knows intimately. Like his hero, Mr. Conrad was a wartime Vice Consul in Seville. His love of Spain and his powers to describe its beauty and dignity give breadth to the book and provide a fascinating backdrop against which the speeding twists of the narrative take place.