Hornet Flight

It is June 1941, and the low point of the war, England throws wave after wave of RAF bombers across the Channel, but somehow the Luftwaffe is able to shoot them down at will. The skies - indeed, the war itself - seem to belong to Hitler.

But on a small Danish island across the North Sea, Harald Olufsen, a bright eighteen-year-old with a talent for engineering, stumbles upon a secret German installation. Its machinery is like nothing he heas ever seen before, and he knows he must tell someone - if he can only figure who.

With England preparing its largest aerial assault ever, what Harald has discovered may turn the course of the war - but the race to convey the information could have terrible consequences for everyone close to him: For his older brother Arne, a pilot in the grounded Danish air force and already under suspicion of the authorities. For Arne s fiancée, Hermia, an MI6 intelligence analyst desperate to resurrect the foundering Danish resistance. And most of all, for Harald himself - because as the hour of the assault approaches, it will all fall to him and his friend Karen to get the word to England. And the only means available to them is a derelict Hornet Moth airplane abandoned in a ruined church, a plane so decrepit that it is unlikely ever to get off the ground.

Pursued by the enemy; hunter by collaborators; with almost no training, limited fuel, and no way of knowing if they can ever survive the six-hundred-mile flight, the two will carry with them England s best - perhaps only - hope to avoid disaster.

Filled with knife-edge suspense and rich, tantalizing characters, this is Ken Follett writing at the top of his form - unforgettable writer.