Shadow Knights

Shadow Knights: The Secret War against Hitler (2010) by Gary Kamiya. The cover of this book touts it as "Pulp History," and that's a pretty good description. In three parallel stories, which alternate throughout the book, we read tales of Resistance fighters in World War II. The fighters are members of Britain's SOE, or Special Operations Executive, which was set up by Churchill to go behind enemy lines and do whatever could be done to slow the German war machine. According to the book, the SOE was pretty successful -- preventing Hitler from getting his claws on heavy water needed to build an atomic bomb, disrupting the movement of German armored units after D-Day, and providing continuing support for the Maquis, the French Resistance. It's not an especially well-written book, but it deserves extra credit for the illustrations by Jeffrey Smith. Overall, it was a good read. Grade: B+