Richard Prince is back in this third installment of his eponymous series. While it is not necessary to have read the first two books, it certainly does help.

The book opens with an English officer describing the debacle at Arnhem (Operation Market Garden, for those into the European theater of operations during WWII). He’s insistent that the Germans knew the plans for the operation.

One of the issues with series characters is giving the reader some backstory so they know enough to agree to go along on the ride the main character is about to take, but aren’t overwhelmed to the point that they miss that bus. Generally, it’s a good idea to drizzle in the backstory like you’re making your own aioli: slowly. Doing infodumps isn’t a good way to go, just as dumping all the oil in at once into your aioli isn’t: in the case of the latter, it causes the mix to break, and in the case of he former, it breaks the reading experience. Unfortunately, Ring of Spies starts with a lot of infodumping. There are also numerous “As you know, Bob” moments where one character is telling another character something they already know as a way to get that information to the reader.

Once past all this, the story picks up, and we find out the Germans have placed numerous agents in England. Prince is back in Lincolnshire, having recovered his lost son (book two) and basically policing an area that has no huge issues with crime, and almost zero serious crimes. He’s approached again, just as he was in the first book, to join the intelligence service to help root our the German moles.

While he resists at first, he also acknowledges that he is a bit restless, having grown accustomed to the action of being a spy, where any misstep could be the last one. He agrees, and we’re off into skullduggery within England itself.

There are scenes from the German side of the war, as there have been previously in this series, and we get infodumps on this side as well, but the positioning of the agents in England, how they are insulated from one another (to make them more difficult to detect, and to make it more difficult for them to give up the entire ring), and how they communicate with the Germans was quite interesting.

The ebb and flow of the war – even though we know that in the year of book, 1944, victory in Europe is coming sooner rather than later – and the danger war brings are still very real for the participants. The book continues at a good pace through the machinations of ally and foe alike. The ending, though, feels a bit rushed, even with the buildup of action as the Allies move ever forward to victory.

Even with that, however, it’s a worthy entry to the series. I didn’t find it as good as the first book in the series, but I did like it more than the second. It’s well worth a read for thriller fans and history buffs alike.

A solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Canelo and NetGalley for the review copy.