The Athens Assignment

In 1941 Xanthe Schneider is back in England after her Berlin mission and has recently become a mother. She intends to abandon field work, but British intelligence needs her again as the German battleship Bismarck prepares to enter the Atlantic. Information connected with Enigma sends Xanthe towards occupied Greece, where she must help identify the ship’s movements before it can threaten Allied convoys.

The second Xanthe Schneider thriller places a fictional one-woman intelligence operation alongside the real pursuit of Bismarck. Boyle contrasts Xanthe’s responsibilities to her infant son with the demands of wartime service, using the Axis occupation of Greece and the accelerating naval intelligence war as the historical framework for the mission.