Another book I got through the Amazon Vine program. While I’m interested in history and archaeology, I mainly got it for the espionage angle.
A retro review from February 18, 2013.
Review: Jungleland: A Mysterious Lost City, A WWII Spy, and a True Story of Deadly Adventure, Christopher S. Stewart, 2013.
Don’t come to this book expecting much about the wartime espionage activities of Theodore Morde. Apart from an episode in Istanbul where he talks with Franz von Pappen, Germany’s ambassador to Turkey and an old spymaster himself, about assassinating Hitler, this book has little to offer in that area, and you’d be better off just going straight to the listed bibliographic sources.
While I didn’t get the espionage history I hoped for when picking up this book, I still enjoyed it. Stewart moves his narrative along quickly, alternating between Morde’s life – particularly his 1939 expedition to the Mosquito Coast -and his own expedition (with archaeologist Chris Begley as a guide) to that area 70 years later. Stewart juggles so many things in this book – archaeological discovery, self-discovery, Morde’s life, espionage, and Honduran history – that, if you’re bored with one subject, your area of interest quickly shows up again. The flip side of that is, of course, that it’s more of an appetizer than a meal, but it’s still an enjoyable book and not a major investment of time. I particularly enjoyed the encounters with Hondurans (and tourists) in both time periods.
And, yes, there is a resolution of sorts to the matter of whether Ciudad Blanca exists.
More reviews of espionage titles are indexed on the Espionage History page.
MarzAat 