{"id":469,"date":"2022-12-28T22:54:01","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T03:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samiamreadingandreviewing.wordpress.com\/?p=469"},"modified":"2025-06-24T21:03:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T21:03:02","slug":"an-affair-of-spies-ronald-h-balson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/?p=469","title":{"rendered":"An Affair of Spies – Ronald H Balson"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No stranger to writing historical novels, Ronald H Balson has produced An Affair of Spies<\/em>, a very interesting historical romance thriller. I really enjoyed this novel – historical romance thriller\/mystery is my favorite niche category – as I learned a lot amidst an action-packed book. I\u2019d give this novel five out of five stars for being the total package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nathan Silverman is a Jewish refugee in America, the only one his family could afford to send to the US in the years leading up to WWII. He\u2019s a private in the army, training at Camp Ritchie to go over to Europe when the US enters the war. However, other plans are made for him when he finds himself ordered to New York to join the Manhattan Project. A physicist wants to defect from Germany and Nathan\u2019s job is to escort him and a US physicist – who will verify the information – out from behind enemy lines. Of course, first, he and Dr. Fisher must get behind<\/em> enemy lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The premise of An Affair of Spies<\/em> was interesting enough, but to add to the intrigue, Nathan knows the scientist that\u2019s defecting to the US because his father (also a physicist) worked with him. His intimate knowledge of the people, language, and his hometown make Nathan an ideal candidate for this mission. Nathan also has a personal mission: to see if he can locate his family, who he hasn\u2019t heard from for years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll note that I\u2019ve written an intriguing synopsis of An Affair of Spies<\/em> – if you don\u2019t want to read this book yet, you probably never will – without actually mentioning the Affair<\/em> part. Dr. Fisher is actually Dr. Allison Fisher, a young scientist involved with the manhattan project. She masquerades as Nathan\u2019s girlfriend, and the fraught danger the two experience, and what they learn about each other through it, leads them to develop a deeper connection than they thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have I enticed you to read this book yet??<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought this book was fantastic; I could tell that it was meticulously researched from the details of the Manhattan Project, to the geography of the German landscape and research sites, to the details of the Hauptmann uniform that Nathan wears. I love books that educate me while I\u2019m being entertained by the story, and An Affair of Spies<\/em> married those two elements really well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Affair of Spies<\/em> was also true to its genre of historical romance thriller; obviously, it hit the historical part, but it was really a thriller as well. Nathan and Dr. Fisher are operating under the noses of the Nazi regime, who scrutinize everything, and they get into trouble more than once with officials and have to make quick getaways. It was definitely a tense book, but the emotional side of Nathan searching for his family, engaging with Dr. Fisher, and the camaraderie he finds among allies helped to balance out the tense moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of romance, it was very soft, where the chemistry (no pun intended) between Nathan and Dr. Fisher was hinted at throughout the book, but not acknowledged until the end of their mission. While I usually do like the dirtier type of romance, I thought a softer romance was totally appropriate for the tense situation in which the characters found themselves. There\u2019s no time to contemplate your emotions for someone else when you\u2019re in a life-or-death situation, and both Nathan and Dr. Fisher were very rational about not dealing with their feelings until after their mission was finished. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel I\u2019ve said enough about this book – if you\u2019re not interested by now, you probably won\u2019t be! An Affair of Spies<\/em> was an excellent read and I\u2019d recommend it to anyone who wanted an entertaining and thrilling novel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’d like to learn more about Ronald Balson or check out his other books, you can find him here: https:\/\/www.ronaldbalson.com\/about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No stranger to writing historical novels, Ronald H Balson has produced An Affair of Spies, a very interesting historical romance thriller. I really enjoyed this novel – historical romance thriller\/mystery is my favorite niche category – as I learned a lot amidst an action-packed book. I\u2019d give this novel five out of five stars forContinue reading “An Affair of Spies – Ronald H Balson”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[26,52,169,172,353,354,355,425,458,460,462,463,464],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-an-affair-of-spies","tag-book-review","tag-historical-romance","tag-historical-thriller","tag-romantic-thriller","tag-ronald-balson","tag-ronald-h-balson","tag-thriller","tag-wwii","tag-wwii-germany","tag-wwii-romance","tag-wwii-spies","tag-wwii-thriller","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/an-affair-of-spies.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/samiamreading.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}