Saboteur - Murphy, Kevin

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Résumé :
Saboteur is a well-crafted historical thriller that successfully blends fact with fiction. I wholeheartedly rate this book 5 out of 5 stars. - Macreen Ouko OnlineBookClub.org A fine work of historical fiction, smartly conceived and elegantly executed. Absolutely compelling. - David Pitt in the Winnipeg Free Press. Follow him on X @bookfella. On 6 December 1917, in the middle of WWI, the French ammunition ship, Mont Blanc, exploded in Halifax harbour, killing over 2,000 people. History records this catastrophe as the largest ever man-made explosion before Hiroshima. What history does not mention is the account of Ben Stendt, a German-Canadian saboteur who in 1916 managed to blow up several ships delivering war supplies to England and France days after they sailed from the port of Halifax. Nor does history mention the role of agents of the German government operating in New York, enlisting Stendt in their plot to blow up the Mont Blanc when it reaches Halifax. Was the explosion an accident? Saboteur is the untold story of those events....

Biographie:
There are two threads to my story. One thread narrates the last voyage of the Mont Blanc, one of the ships involved in the Halifax explosion of 6 December 1917. This was the largest man-made explosion in the world before Heroshima. The other thread follows a Canadian-German saboteur who blows up ships leaving Halifax in 1916 and 1917 by secretely planting small cigar bombs in the holds of out-going ships. Bombs with delayed triggers that explode days later far out to sea. He is supported and well trained in his activities by a German ring of American-German saboteurs under direct control by Germany. He is supplid with cigar bombs made by a German-American pharmacist from a factory in New Jersey. His final mission directed by his American handlers is to blow up the Mont Blanc. The two threads intertwine on 6 Dec 1917....

Sommaire:
Kevin Murphy has been performing his poetry of subversive whimsy for over 45 years, often accompanying himself on guitar or percussion. He is the author of A Beautiful Chaos Demands Energy (2007) and has released two CDs of poetry, Between Onions and Oxygen (2002) and The Bird of Pure Midnight (2015). He is poet-in-residence at the Chuckanut Radio Hour, and is a winner of the Bellingham Mayor Arts Award. Kevin was born in Germany, grew up in upstate New York, and moved to Western Washington in 1979. He lives in Bellingham with his wife, Jeannie Gray....