LAST VOYAGE ON THE DANUBE

About the Book

By late 1938, Adolf Hitler has already begun Germany’s territorial expansion with the surrender of the Sudetenland territory by Czechoslovakia and is preparing for more aggressive actions in 1939. A traditional German General is appalled by Hitler and wants to get word to the British Government of Hitler’s plans to invade and seize the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 – but how? By chance, a holiday cruise ship full of international passengers, including twenty-five Indiana University alumni and spouses of the Class of 1924, are sailing down the Danube River in December 1938. Also on the ship is a British spy trying to get the General’s secret letter to London and German Gestapo officers trying to stop that from happening, but which of the sixty passengers is the British spy? By the time the ship reaches the end of the cruise in Budapest, four people are dead, one alum has found love, one couple is getting divorced and a number of passengers are missing their jewelry. For many, it truly will be their last voyage.

About the Author

Mr. Coyle spent 30 years as a field operations officer for the CIA, almost half of that time abroad, working undercover in a variety of countries, including in Moscow in the mid-1980s during the Soviet Union era. He is a recipient of the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit for one of his Russian operations. After retiring in 2006, he taught courses on national security issues until 2017 at his alma mater, Indiana University, while writing fictional spy novels as a hobby. Having been a student of history and himself an intelligence officer, he is able to weave together an intriguing and realistic tale of historical espionage. He shows in this, his eighth spy novel, that he understands well human motivations and emotions.