22Tango, The Life and Times of Tyrus Edmund Culler, is the culmination of a two-year writing and research project on World War I and II.  The  single, continuous story, divided into 5-volumes for ease of packaging, evolves around the world of Intelligence and how it originated and grew.  It begins in World War I, and matures in the first three years of WWII.  During this research, I became lost in the human interest portion of the entire project, and without warning, an idea for a novel surfaced.  At that moment, the character Tyrus Edmund Culler, a young man from Philadelphia, revealed himself.  Ty and I began to drift through the years as he learned the mechanics of being an agent and begins to ply his trade for the Allies immediately after the start of World War II in September of 1939.  Ty embodies one side of a unique coin, the intelligence efforts on the Allied side of the conflict.  Add to that a more-than-interesting female, on the other side of this unique coin, a counterpart to Tyrus Culler, Britta Eberhardt Blau, a young vibrant woman who decides, on her own, to erode and destroy the power of Hitler from the inside.  She becomes a Nazi operative and dedicates her entire efforts to the subtle destruction of the Nazi empire, The Third Reich.  And what happens then?  After years of separate involvement for essentially the same desired end, the two meet, in a most intriguing manner.

 

They are both aboard the British liner-turned-troop ship, RMS Laconia on opposite sides of the Intelligence battle.  Neither could be aware that this former passenger ship was about to be sunk by the German submarine, U-156, a warship commanded by a most-extraordinary Captain, one Werner Hartenstein, and crewed by a superb, one-of-a-kind crew.  This book spans the time of both operatives' birth to the end of their lives.  In one extraordinary instance, Ty and Britta work together in a self-designed mission that involves the piloting of a Russian-converted B-25, thirteen Jewish children, and both the Nazis and Allies as fighter escorts, on either side of the Channel.  Once operating officially together as Allied agents, the adventures of subtle intrigue and human interest continue to build and build, until two lives merge into one.  The idea for this novel evolved from one of my daughters inquiries as to the state of mind of men in war.

 

DUO control number:  402002

total of all 5 volumes = 529,821 words