I Read Books: City Of Gold

City of Gold is Len Deighton’s WW2 Cairo-set spy thriller, not any other use of the common title. Rommel is coming, seemingly unstoppable. One reason for his success is that he has a spy – somewhere – feeding him extremely good information on the British Army. Better even than they have in London sometimes.

Meanwhile Cairo remains an Egyptian city, formally neutral under the government of the King. But he rules only at the British pleasure. The city is full of exiles and women – wives of troops are being evacuated unless they have a job – and everyone is part of a plot or has an agenda. Even out in the desert there are lies and deceit, with special forces teams criss-crossing the sands.

Into this comes Corporal Ross, arrested for murder, but his escort dies of a heart attack on the way. The escort, Major Cutler, is a policeman, being brought in to head the search for Rommel’s spy. And he has one of special investigation’s warrant cards, one that lets him pass any door, and assume any rank or uniform needed. Which Ross might just make more use of than anyone would expect.

Read This: For a convoluted, almost-real WW2 thriller, that delves deeper into wartime Egypt than usual. A good work even by Deighton’s standards.
Don’t Read This: If spy nonsense is not your thing.