Book Log 2020 #38: Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing

In 1938, a man claiming to have just returned from Argentina settles into a German boarding house. Fifty years later, the son of the woman who ran the house finds the man's diary, which reveals that the man had never been to Argentina, but was a Soviet agent sent to Germany in an attempt to revive the Communist party that had been ruthlessly suppressed by the Nazis.

The book unfolds as the man tries to reconnect with the people he knew in the German railroad industry and gague if they are willing to rejoin the struggle or not. We also see the man grow closer to the boarding house owner and her son, providing a personal counterpoint to his secret mission.

I enjoyed Downing's series set in and around Berlin during World War II (each book named for a different train station), and liked this one as well.