The Assassin's
Mark – David Ebsworth
£9.99 SilverWood Books
Dave Ebsworth - who in real-life is
former TGWU regional secretary Dave McCall - has written a highly enjoyable and
very descriptive novel set in the final year of the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War.
With the elected Republican government in disarray a confident General Franco
has opened up the bloody battlefields along the country’s north coast to invite
tourist’s to celebrate his successes and turn a blind eye to the atrocities he
– and his Italian and German Allies - has committed.
Peace-loving, naïve left-wing
reporter, Jack Telford, is asked by his employer to spend two weeks travelling
by bus with a group of visitors that on the surface he has politically little
in common with. It’s a journey of great heartbreak but also great beauty and
Ebsworth brings both skilfully alive. The author provides vivid descriptions,
especially of the architecture and social atmosphere, which helps transport the
reader back 75 years.
Finding himself drawn to a right-wing
female journalist, Telford can’t help but grow fond of many of his fellow
tourists. Especially when the group is captured by Republican guerrillas and
rescued by Franco’s forces in the days before a planned meeting with the
general when Telford faces being betrayed.
David Ebsworth is the author of The
Jacobites’ Apprentice, which was critically reviewed by the Historical Novel
Society, who deemed it “worthy of a place on every historical fiction
bookshelf”. For more information on Dave’s work visit www.davidebsworth.com
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