Review Detail

Sarah Goldstein, alias Ursulla Haller, is living right under Nazi rule in 1940 Germany. She's the Shirley Temple of the Nazi regime. No one knows the truth, that she's in fact Jewish. The man she works for tells her that there's a mission in Central Africa where a rumored doctor is working on a chemical that might cause mass destruction. Sarah is quick to sign on. Only once there the real horrors of what might happen if the wrong people get the chemicals show up.

What worked: I love this spy series set in WWII. In the first book in the series, readers are introduced to Sarah. Now in this book she goes on a trip into Central Africa on a search for an elusive doctor who might be developing a germ warfare called 'the Bleeding' to use against enemies of Hitler. The details of the trip and what she encounters are vivid and horrific. The scenes where this beautiful doctor injects African citizens is chilling. She and her stepfather consider the African citizens 'throw away' people. With the injections, a plague wipes out whole villages. Sarah sees the absolute worse of people and this pushes her to the very limits of who she can trust and if the cause she's fighting for is worth it.

At first Sarah comes across as naive over what she witnesses and then quickly turns cynical. Readers see the seedy part of what some went through during this time period which includes the aftermath of colonization in Africa. Racist and hatred is rampant. Also Sarah isn't sure who to trust.


Gripping, engaging espionage novel where a young spy finds herself fighting against time to stop a scientist from unleashing a horrific germ warfare against enemies of the Nazi regime.