This is a work of fiction, except for the events that happened.
These are the first words of the foreword of Anthony Byrt’s DYING DAYS, a blisteringly exciting tale of the last embers of the Second World War and the first frost of the Cold War.
Trieste was one of the last cities in Italy to be liberated from Nazi rule. The Yugoslavs made it into Trieste on May 1, 1945. The New Zealand Army, being the advance troops of the British forces, arrived a day later. Stalemate and standoff ensued for forty days.
Alex Madigan, a shadowy MI6 agent man is teamed with Donnelly, a kiwi intelligence officer to investigate the disappearance and suspected murder of a group of New Zealand soldiers in the occupied territory.
Navigating a labyrinth of leads, misdeeds and tainted allegiances, the pair seem mismatched, one moral compass set on an idealist course, the other navigating a more pragmatic purview. This diametric gives the duo a frisson that plays into the drama an added dimension to the conflict of opposing occupiers.
In the rubble of actual events, atrocities, rumours and lies abound, and in the great tradition of classic spy yarns, there is deceit and double cross, a conspiracy to conceal, a love story of sorts and a filament of the femme fatale.
DYING DAYS is riddled with genuine intrigue and adventure, attuned to the tone of the time in which it is set, inciting a worthy comparison to Nevil Shute and Graham Greene.
A great deal too remarkable for truth, Byrt’s fiction fizzes with authenticity, any improbability lanced with convincing plotting and character. The story revels in incident and the prose has a happy flow of cheeky humour.
Author Anthony Byrt acknowledges his debt to Geoffrey Cox’s The Race for Trieste. Cox was head of intelligence on the New Zealanders’ final push through northern Italy. Yet, no single history is ever complete and Byrt has impressively woven an intriguing thriller from both what is known and unknown, a speculative spy yarn sewn in the fields of fact.
Teeming with twists and trysts, DYING DAYS is an addictive, adrenalin fuelled read.
DYING DAYS by Anthony Byrt is published by Affirm Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster (Australia).
