The Reflecting Man, Vol. 2

In January of 1936, our loquacious and unreliable narrator, Kurtis De’ath arrives in London on the orders of Adolf Hitler. Kurtis is loaded with secrets, confections, and more than a few mysteries. Closeting his other identities (Herr Death, mysterious confidant of Adolf Hitler, and the Wagner Family’s Shokoladenmann, dispenser of the delightful Bird Bonz), he becomes fellow Maritimer, Lord Beaverbrook’s gossip columnist for the Daily Express and is immediately drawn into the political and social British maelstrom of Abdication and Appeasement. Deftly working his way through the class and clutter of English society as Kurtis Tod, he does his best to keep his friends (Erl Echland, Ulrich Roller, Bella Fromm), make new ones (Tom Driberg, William Joyce, ‘Huge’ Castlerosse), confound his enemies (Joseph Ball, Maxwell Knight, Josef Goebbels), and to derive some sense out of it all as the world edges even closer to a second Great War. And, when things get a little nasty, it may be that Kurtis De’ath is just the fellow you want on your side. Set in multiple locales in Canada, America, France, Germany, and England, before and during the Second World War, Volume Two of The Reflecting Man is the continuation of the antic, ribald journey of a loquacious and unreliable narrator, Kurtis De’ath, from the Maritimes in Canada, whose unusual talents lead him into the innermost circles of Hitler’s Third Reich and Churchill’s British government. Kurtis’ journey through the roots and branches of actual historical figures and events is, at its heart, in meticulous detail, an examination of how Europe went to war in 1939. The Reflecting Man is himself a reflection of his times. The novel is widely and deeply researched, employing hundreds of non-fiction accounts, journals, and diaries of actual participants and observers of the darkening clouds over Europe and the descent into war.