 First edition | |
| Author | Jack Higgins |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | War, Thriller Novel |
| Publisher | William Collins, Sons |
Publication date | 1986 |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
Night of the Fox is a World War II spy thriller novel by Jack Higgins, first published in 1986. [1] [2] It was adapted into the 1990 television film Night of the Fox , starring George Peppard as Martineau and Michael York as Erwin Rommel.
Alan Stacy, a professor from Harvard University, visits Jersey to complete his biography of his friend and pre-World War II fellow academic Harry Martineau. The work has lain unfinished since 1939. He has been unable to obtain any information on Harry's wartime activities, but he knows that Harry worked for the British Government in some very secret capacities. Harry is now dead and his body has been released to a Dr. Drayton.
Stacy arrives on the day of Harry's funeral, but only one mourner is present, Dr. Sarah Drayton. Invited back to her house, he is told by Sarah that the two of them worked for Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the war. She shows Stacy a photo of them posing with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and then tells the story behind the photo.
In the aftermath of the Slapton Sands disaster, Hugh Kelso, a US Army colonel and engineering officer, is badly wounded but manages to climb into a life-raft. He is washed ashore on Jersey, and rescued by Hélène de Ville, wife of the Seigneur of Jersey, and Sean Gallagher, a former General in the Irish Army, who has retired in Jersey. They manage to establish communications, via a French resistance contact, with SOE, reporting that Kelso is alive, although badly injured and under medical care.
Brigadier Dougal Munro of SOE is aware that Kelso is a 'bigot', one of the few officers who knows the full details of the planned D-Day landings. After consultation with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, he decides that Kelso must either be rescued – or eliminated – to stop him from talking, should he be captured and interrogated.
Munro recruits Harry Martineau, a former Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, and now a covert operative and ruthless killer. Harry is recovering from an assignment in France in which he was shot and severely injured. As his assistant and 'cover', they also recruit Sarah Drayton, a young nurse with connections in, and local knowledge of, Jersey. Harry assumes the identity of SD Standartenführer Max Vogel. He is supplied with a forged letter of authority signed by Hitler and Himmler, giving him unlimited and unquestioned authority. Sarah's cover is that of Anne-Marie de la Tour, his French 'mistress'. She undertakes very brief training in the use of small arms under Sergeant Kelly, and a complete makeover by Mrs Moon, an expert make-up artist borrowed from Denham Film Studios.
The two are flown to occupied France by a Westland Lysander aeroplane and Harry uses his authority to demand transport on a regular convoy from the port of Granville to occupied Jersey. Harry sails on a naval vessel, but Sarah, as a civilian, must travel on a cargo boat. On board, she meets Lt. Guido Orsini, an Italian gunnery officer. The flotilla is attacked by Allied Motor Torpedo Boats and the boat on which Sarah is sailing is sunk by torpedoes. She is rescued by Orsini and they finally arrive in Jersey.
Sarah's civilian documents and status – and the Walther PPK pistol she carries – arouse some suspicion with Captain Muller, the local head of the Geheime Feldpolizei , but Harry's impeccable authority leaves the Germans scrambling to assist him in any way he wishes, providing him accommodation and a personal vehicle, a Kubelwagen. Nevertheless, the Chief of Police, seconded from the Gestapo, decides to find out more about Vogel.
On a tour of the island, Vogel finds Inspector Willi Kleist, Muller's deputy, trying to rape a young local girl, and after a fight, Kleist is badly injured by Vogel. The former swears revenge on Vogel.
The plan to evacuate the wounded Kelso is upset by the arrival of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel on a surprise tour of inspection. But no-one of the party, and only one of the German officers, Major Hofer, is aware that 'Rommel' is actually Corporal Erich Berger, a cabaret performer and actor who is Rommel's double. The real Rommel has been drawn into a plot to assassinate Hitler and needs to be temporarily away from Germany, meeting with several generals in Normandy to formulate their plan. Berger is to serve as his alibi, with Hofer as his 'aide'.
A small aircraft is sitting at the airfield for the weekly mail flight, but the flight cannot be commandeered except by special authority. Harry, who has planned to assassinate Rommel, unmasks him as Berger and gets him to give that authority. Berger agrees to co-operate, and reveals that he is actually Heini Baum, a German Jew who has assumed the identity of the dead Berger and has survived as a soldier, even winning the Iron Cross while serving with the Afrika Korps.
The operation is nearly upset by the arrival of a drunken Kleist, who has overheard them speaking English and now knows the real identities of both Vogel and Berger. He holds them at gunpoint, but is overpowered and killed by Gallagher. They place him in a car which is set on fire and pushed over a cliff. Sarah, Harry and Baum commandeer the plane and fly towards France. The crew are overpowered and ordered to fly to England.
The escape plan is discovered, and Muller has learned that no-one in Berlin has ever heard of 'Vogel'. A Luftwaffe night fighter is scrambled to shoot them down. One of the crew is killed and the pilot, a Finn who has thrown in his lot with the escapees, drops to almost sea-level, drawing down the pursuing fighter, which crashes. They continue to England, now in radio contact with the RAF.
On landing, they are surrounded by armed soldiers. Baum rushes excitedly forward and is shot by a guard, ostensibly by accident but actually on Munro's orders. As he dies, he begs Harry to say Kaddish for him.
The action returns to the present, and Sarah reveals that after the war, she qualified as a medical doctor and worked in the Cromwell Hospital, where she'd been nursing when she was recruited. She later married Orsini and lived on the family estate outside Florence, operating a country practice as Contessa Orsini. When Guido died as a result of a motor race accident, she returned to Jersey, despite the desire of her son, the present Count, to stay in Italy.
She tells Stacy that Harry continued to work for SOE, but was shot down by friendly fire a few months later. His body, buried in the Essex marshes, was not found until recently and he has now received a much belated burial.
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox, he served in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, as well as serving in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the army of Imperial Germany. Rommel was injured multiple times in both world wars.
Violette Reine Elizabeth Szabo, GC was a British-French Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent during the Second World War and a posthumous recipient of the George Cross. On her second mission into occupied France, Szabo was captured by the German army, interrogated, tortured and deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany, where she was executed.
Gwendolyne Maxine "Gwen" Stacy is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, usually as a supporting character in those featuring Spider-Man. A college student and the daughter of George and Helen Stacy, she is the first romantic interest for Peter following his high school graduation before she is murdered by the Green Goblin. Her death has haunted Peter ever since, and stories published long afterwards indicate she still holds a special place in his heart. Gwen is posthumously subjected to numerous cloning experiments by her former professor Miles Warren, Peter's clone Ben Reilly, and an A.I. of Harry Osborn, the latter resulting in the creation of the Kindreds, and Ben briefly resurrecting Gwen in Dead No More: The Clone Conspiracy (2016–2017), with the embodiment of Death herself confirming in Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider (2017–2018) that all clones Ben created of deceased people had their souls intact on being brought back, while clones of living people had unique souls of their own. In the alternate realities of Ultimate Marvel and Spider-Gwen, a still-living Gwen respectively becomes their universe's versions of Carnage and Spider-Woman.
Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. His best known works are the theatre plays Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, The Broken Jug, Amphitryon and Penthesilea, and the novellas Michael Kohlhaas and The Marquise of O. Kleist died by suicide together with a close female friend who was terminally ill.
Jackdaws is a World War II spy thriller written by British novelist Ken Follett. It was published in hardcover format in 2001 by Macmillan. It was reissued as a paperback book by Signet Books in 2002.
Ragtime is a novel by E. L. Doctorow, first published in 1975. The sweeping historical fiction occurs in the area of New York City between 1902 and 1912.
Karl Michael Vogler was a German actor, probably best known for his appearances in several big-budget English language films. In The Blue Max (1966), he co-starred with George Peppard and Ursula Andress as the squadron commander, and in Patton (1970), he portrayed General Erwin Rommel. In between, he was in Robert Redford's Downhill Racer (1969) as a ski company owner.
Friedrich Karl Albert Dollmann was a German general during World War II who commanded the 7th Army during the Invasion of France and the early phases of the Allied invasion of Normandy until his death in June 1944.
Percival Ulysses "Perry" Cox, M.D., is a fictional character played by John C. McGinley on the American television comedy drama Scrubs. Cox appears in every episode except for "My Last Words", "My Comedy Show", and "My Full Moon", all from Season 8.
Five Graves to Cairo is a 1943 war film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Franchot Tone and Anne Baxter. Set in World War II, it is one of a number of films based on Lajos Bíró's 1917 play Hotel Imperial: Színmű négy felvonásban, including the 1927 film Hotel Imperial. Erich von Stroheim portrays Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in a supporting performance.
The Eagle Has Flown is a book by Jack Higgins, first published in 1991. It is a sequel to The Eagle Has Landed.
This is a timeline of events that occurred during World War II in 1942.
Tomorrow Is Another Day is a 1951 crime drama film noir directed by Felix E. Feist and starring Ruth Roman and Steve Cochran. An ex-convict who thinks he killed a man goes into hiding with a woman whose boyfriend is the man he supposedly killed.
Night of the Fox is a 1990 made-for-TV film by Charles Jarrott, based on the 1986 novel of the same name written by Jack Higgins. It was broadcast in France on TF1.
Amour Fou is a 2014 Austrian film directed by Jessica Hausner, starring Christian Friedel and Birte Schnöink. The story is set in Berlin in 1810 and 1811, and follows the German writer Heinrich von Kleist and his lover Henriette Vogel in the final stages of their lives. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Spider-Gwen is an ongoing comic book series published by Marvel Comics that began February 2015. The series revolves around Gwen Stacy of Earth-65, an alternate universe version of Gwen Stacy that debuted in Edge of Spider-Verse #2 as part of the 2014–2015 Spider-Man storyline "Spider-Verse". Spider-Gwen explores a universe where Gwen Stacy was bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker, leading her to a career as the Spider-Woman of her world.
The Rommel myth, or the Rommel legend, is a phrase used by a number of historians for the common depictions of German field marshal Erwin Rommel as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany due to his presumed participation in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler, which led to Rommel's forced suicide in 1944. According to these historians, who take a critical view of Rommel, such depictions are not accurate.
Cold Harbour is a book by British writer Jack Higgins, set during World War II and first published in 1990.
The Kindreds, or simply Kindred, is the name of several fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Introduced in 2004 as Gabriel and Sarah, the alleged twin children of Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy, with Gabriel becoming the Grey Goblin and later the second American Son, their true origin is later revealed during the Sinister War story-arc as a series of constantly dying and recreated clones of Peter Parker and Gwen, created by a corrupted A.I. copy of Harry Osborn, that were then transformed into demonic revenants by Mephisto as Kindred.
"Sinister War" is a 2021 comic book storyline published by Marvel Comics, starring the character Spider-Man and written by Nick Spencer. The story deals with Spider-Man being in the middle of a conflict between multiple teams of villains, including the Sinister Six and Savage Six, orchestrated by Kindred. The storyline received mixed reviews from critics with many deeming it as an underwhelming conclusion to Nick Spencer's Spider-Man run due to inconsistent art, sluggish pacing, and Kindred.