Valkyrie

Michael Prichard's gravelly, unaffected reading of this WWII memoir evokes the style and manner of a 1940s broadcaster--one who has witnessed firsthand the horrors and the perils of that desperate era but is honor bound to report what he has seen fairly, fully, and dispassionately. Von Boeselager's account of his and his brother Georg's involvement in the 1944 plot to kill Hitler is brief and somewhat peripheral, but interesting for its eyewitness perspective. Prichard breathes character and immediacy into a narrative that, composed when the author was 89, owes more to the leveling of the years than to the impressions of the moment. This VALKYRIE is tangential to the story told in the Tom Cruise film of the same name and is recommended for those who have seen that film, or already know something about this story. D.A.W. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine