‘Mr Einstein’s Secretary’ review | Lively romp through major events of first half of 20th century is a tad difficult to swallow

Mr Einstein’s Secretary
Matthew Reilly
Orion

Matthew Reilly is best known as a writer of high-octane thrillers, and while Mr Einstein’s Secretary doesn’t really fit into that category, there is enough quick-fire action and outrageous coincidence to make it obvious where the author’s roots lie.

The novel opens in the US in 1948 with Hanna Fischer observing her own funeral, which is poorly attended, with Albert Einstein one of only four mourners. We are left wondering whether Hanna is watching from some higher existence, but eventually, of course, all will be revealed.

There are a number of jumps in time as we go back over Hanna’s life, starting with her German childhood, when she and her parents were the Einsteins’ neighbours and, coincidentally and usefully, the child Hanna was a physics prodigy. And we get snippets from various interrogations Hanna underwent at the hands of the US police in the 1930s, the Gestapo in 1942, and the Red Army in 1945 as her story slowly unfolds. It is difficult to convey the essence of the book without giving away some spoilers, but I’m not sure it really matters.

Hanna has a big role in many of the crucial events of the first half of the 20th century. She finds herself among New York’s gangs during the Prohibition era, and later works, as the title suggests, as a secretary for Einstein and a well-connected businessman in the years leading up to the 1929 stock market crash. And then she is recruited as a spy to return to Germany.

She doesn’t just do low-level spying. Hanna finds herself working as a secretary to Albert Speer, and later to the repulsive Martin Bormann, Hitler’s deputy, only to eventually escape from Berlin at the end of the war by the skin of her teeth. Along the way she fends off kidnappers, attends the 1936 Berlin Olympics, hobnobs with some of the greatest scientific minds of the age, and sees the worst of the Nazi atrocities. And while all this is going on, she has to deal with her evil identical twin, Norma, who disappears for long parts of the story, only to return at crucial and disastrous moments.

If all this sounds implausible — well, it is. Reilly keeps the action moving so fast that maybe his committed readers will swallow it all. It starts off being quite fun, but, for me at least, the utter nonsense became a little hard to take. However, if you can suspend disbelief, it makes for a lively romp.