The Information Officer

Reviews

“The Information Officer ratchets up the tension with each page, leading to a pulse-pounding climax that will remain with you long after the tale has ended. Wartime Malta comes alive in this meticulously researched and beautifully written portrait of an island on the edge.”

“It’s only a story. It’s only a story. It’s only…But the sense of immediacy Mark Mills brings to The Information Officer is so intense that this breathtaking novel reads more like a memoir than a wartime thriller…Even without the added complication of a sadistic murderer, the tension is killing—and Mills leaves us gasping for breath at the end.”

“Thrilling…magnificent entertainment…this utterly ravishing novel seethes with femmes fatales and double agents…[it] reads like the story of Casablanca revisited, like a vanished Graham Greene.”

“[Mills’] writing, laced with amusing classical English literary allusions and mixed with a bit of Virgil, is graceful and fluid, the research scrupulous.”

“Mills paints a vivid portrait of a tenacious people, embattled and besieged troops, and a principled man trying to resolve the conflict between duty and justice.”

“Robin Sachs’ upper-crust British accent works perfectly for Max Chadwick of the Ministry of Information in Malta during WWII as he whitewashes the war for the local community native residents and high-ranking Brits. His job turns deadly when he encounters a series of murders of Maltese women that are covered up by British authorities. Sachs’s deadpan delivery of the villain’s thoughts makes his inventory of rape and murder more chilling and is a sharp contrast from the droll patter of the Brits playing at war and infidelity. Sachs’s vocal transformations from the upright Chadwick and his circle to the perverse mind and actions of the killer are excellent, as is his narration of the German air attacks that endanger Chadwick’s search for justice.”

“Sachs vividly portrays British soldiers (from gunners and flyboys to officers) in this mystery set during the WWII siege of Malta…The stratified British service gives Sachs many opportunities to fine-tune a myriad of accents…The killer, unknown until the end, casts a pall over the story, and his everyday voice (thus his identity is kept secret) is quite different from his private one. Sachs' reading elevates this suspenseful story.”

“Like James Benn in his Billy Boyle series, Mills makes excellent use of a lesser-known aspect of WWII, but unlike Benn, he is a fine stylist as well as a storyteller, enabling him to bring a remarkable degree of eloquence and emotional depth to his material. As historical fiction, as mystery, and as love story, this one hits on all cylinders.”

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