Book Review: "The Devil's Pact" by James Holland

The Devil’s Pact

Jack Tanner is back, in the latest adventure by historian/novelist James Holland, and the heroic British soldier, a member of the fictional Yorks Rangers, is caught up in the events surrounding the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

After time spent on the staff of General Patton, Tanner is the lone Brit involved in a risky covert mission into Sicily before the invasion begins, travelling with an American colonel whose job is to make contact – and then a deal – with the Mafia kingpin on the island, whose domination has been watered down by the advent of fascism and is looking for a way back to prominence, behind the American and British invasion, and the ousting of Mussolini’s troops from the island.

Herein lies the ‘Devil’s Pact’, the Allies needing mafia support to make a quick sweep through the countryside, and is the basis for this full-throttle adventure. Right from the outset, Tanner is in the middle of the big invasion, and it’s a relief that, a few chapters in, he returns to the Yorks Rangers and some of the great characters Holland has created and developed over the past four books – Sykes, Peploe, Brown and Phyllis. The opening to the book, with Tanner doing covert work with the Americans, didn’t feel quite right because he was without his usual sidekicks. When Skyes and co reappear, everything’s back to normal.

There’s a new enemy who, ironically, leaps out of Tanner’s past, Colonel Creer, a man Tanner knew from his previous army service in India – and was, there, a cohort with the murderous Blackistone, who had featured in an earlier novel – and Creer is aghast that Tanner, who had been about the only incorruptible soldier in India, is now an acting major, having been jumped up from the ranks.

Creer has earned the nickname ‘Croaker’ for his sudden ability to fall ill on the eve of battle, and is one of those classic officers who insists on discipline and good administration, but is nowhere to be found when the guns start firing. Of course, that puts him at odds with Tanner’s oversized heroics, and there is predictable but interesting friction between the two.

A little more of Tanner’s complicated and as-yet-mostly-unrevealed history, surrounding why he joined the army in the first place. The slow reveal keeps every book more interesting and Holland providing a few more small pieces of the puzzle here.

The spectre of the Mafia and the Allied involvement with them lurks in the background for the first half of the novel, which details the landing and early battles to secure a beachhead, and exploded when Tanner – as he is prone to doing – upsets a Mafioso boss once the fighting has died down, earning himself the enmity of the entire organisation. Of course, Tanner deals with things in his own way: like a bull at a gate. He also meets a widowed Sicilian woman who, herself, has entanglements with the Mafia.

Complicating matters is the Allies’ need for Mafia support and towards the end there’s an interesting plot twist that I didn’t see coming, and a fairly surprising conclusion that whet my appetite for the next installment.

If you enjoy World War Two fiction and over-the-top heroics against a backdrop of real and crucial events, The Devil’s Pact is for you.