Hess's life story in itself makes for fascinating reading and D. Eric Sturdy has interwoven a fictional aspect into Hess's biography and created a plausible story involving Britain's MI6, America's CIA, the Soviet KGB and the foremost politicians of the day.
Rudolf Hess's parentage and family connections in Germany are well established, as is his involvement in World War I when he was seriously wounded and learnt to fly during the last months of the war. Hess's enlistment and advancement in the Nazi Party after the 1918 armistice, and his promotion to become Adolf Hitler's Deputy Führer in the 1930s, is again a matter of historical fact, and the Nazi hierarchy described in the book existed and worked with Hess. Likewise, after Hess's peace-making flight to Britain on 10th May 1941, military personnel, doctors, politicians and MI6 agents were known to have been involved during his captivity at Mytchett Place in Aldershot and Maindiff Court in Abergavenny
The author's experience at Spandau Prison in 1952 and 1953 generated an enduring interest in the fate of the seven Nazi war criminals in custody. The sole Nazi figure still shrouded in mystery is "Rudolf Hess". Doppelgänger theorists have made a strong case to prove that Prisoner No.7's "suicide" was a murder plot.
The Author has strived to unravel the minefield of information surrounding the identity of Prisoner No. 7 and, in the light of information currently available, the truth about his suicide and has recorded a fictional scenario about the ultimate fate of the "real" Rudolph Hess.
