To Catch a King Book

Early in WWII, as German forces prepared to invade Britain, an overconfident Adolf Hitler and his minions came up with a bizarre plot: Convince Edward, the Duke of Windsor and former king of England, to join the Nazi cause. Hitler was certain the duke was a Nazi-sympathizer and would make a good pro-German British king once England was occupied. To make this plan a reality, Hitler sent SS General Walter Schellenberg to Portugal, where the duke and his wife, Wallis Simpson, were staying, to convince the royal couple to defect. Thus was the start of Operation Willi.

All that is true. What exactly happened during Operation Willi has been subject to conjecture. Edward, who abdicated the throne to married his twice-divorced American lover, was a known Germanophile who often made admiring remarks about Hitler. His wife was believed to be a former lover of the German foreign minister, and also harbored pro-German sentiments. However, whether the duke ever seriously considered siding with the Nazis after the war started in 1939 is unsure.

In To Catch a King, author Jack Higgins promotes in fiction form his own idea of what may have happened during Operation Willi. In a forward to the novel, Higgins admits he believes the duke was an honorable man and a patriot who would never consider betraying his country.

To Catch a King has many of the same elements that made Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed a bestseller'that is a suspenseful, character-driven plot. While two fictional characters, Americans Joe Jackson and Hannah Winter, are the catalysts for the novel's action, most of the other characters are based on the real-life actors who were involved in Operation Willi. Whereas Winston Churchill, the target in Eagle, doesn't make an appearance until the end of the novel, the duke and duchess are main characters in King. So is Walter Schellenberg, the SS master counterspy who held misgivings about serving the Nazi cause and who considered Operation Willi a silly endeavor.

I must say that in creating the character of Joe Jackson, I believe Higgins was giving a tip of the hat to the classic WWII drama Casablanca. Like Humphrey Bogart's character Rick Blaine, Jackson is a veteran of the anti-fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War. While Rick owned Rick's Café Americain in Casablanca, Jackson owns Joe Jackson's American Bar in Lisbon.

I always enjoy Higgins' WWII novels, and I was not disappointed in To Catch a King.