History does not always remember the heroes, but this novel does - I recommend that every student of history read it -  John B. Willett,  Charles William Eliot Professor, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Forget Dan Brown. This is real art history, real conspiracy, and really relevant. The author's writing is up to the task, as is his knowledge of Germany. Glaser is a great figure, for whom one feels enormous empathy. -  Alan Posener, Korrespondent fuer Politik und Gesellschaft, Welt am Sonntag,  Berlin 

... convincing,  absorbing and revealing. Katherine Taylor, Munich Found

I liked it very much, a fascinating story,  intelligently and perceptively written - Karen Hayes - author of Letting Go , Cloud Music and many others

Review by novelist and award winning short-story writer Michael Carson

The Crooked Cross shines light into the early days of the Nazi regime. All the players are in place: Himmler, Hess, and, of course, Adolf Hitler. But this is a time of uncertaintly. It's the very start of the 'thousand-year Reich' that lasted for only twelve. It's a time of shifting allegiances: people don't know which way to turn. Inhuman behaviour is the new rectitude. It's a time when the German character is tested to destruction. Some are carried away by the ersatz ceremonial, the cod-mythology, all the dressing up, the cruelty. But others intuit what they're in for. They can see through the mad theatre of cruelty that is National Socialism.

These resisters seldom get a mention - I'd never heard of any of the heroes here, culled from dusty archives and given a postumous mention in dispatches by this excellent novel. History does not always remember the heroes. Thankfully, this novelist does.

So I learned a lot from the novel. It succeeds on many levels. As in 'The Day of the Jackal' so in 'The Crooked Cross' there is a nail-biting lead-up to climax that takes up the last third of the book and, though one knows that the target will not be assassinated, this does not a jot lessen the suspense. But here the reader is cheering the would-be assassins of Hitler. We know that history sees him surviving until 1945, but we willingly suspend our disbelief, hoping against hope that the just assassins will triumph and - forlorn hope - not come to harm themselves. Good fiction can pull off this ache for happy endings.

Character is revealed when tested under pressure. The pressure-cooker of Germany in 1933 is turned to maximum. Michael Dean, after years of reading and research, has produced a marriage of history and narrative that neither on its own could have managed. The book has a heart, but also a steely centre of escaped truth. This is a wonderful reading experience, not to be rushed. We owe these events and characters a careful reading. We owe it to the author, and we owe it to ourselves, to read this book with due care, and thank whatever gods there be that we have not been set down into the abominable city of night that was Munich 1933... and there tested until we broke. Or stood tall.

 The Crooked Cross by Michael Dean, published by Quaestor2000, May 2009, ISBN 978-1-906836-13-9 Review by Katherine Taylor for Munich Found

The Crooked Cross by Michael Dean peoples the streets of Munich with the players of the past - convincing, absorbing and revealing

An experienced non-fiction and screenplay writer, historian Michael Dean has taken the players of the past out of the history books and onto the streets of Munich. The Crooked Cross, published by Quaestor2000 at the end of May 2009 (and available via Amazon), is an historical novel set in Munich's Nazi-resistance milieu of 1933, the year Hitler came to power.

Wanting to pay tribute to the ordinary Germans who opposed Hitler - the Germans whom history has largely forgotten - British writer Michael Dean has convincingly peopled his novel with journalists, politicians, lawyers, socialites, labourers and family members, some of whom are entirely fictional and others - including the lead protagonist, the lawyer Gerhard Glaser - who have their origins in the non-fictional past.

Also aiming to examine the moral dilemmas posed by bravery, Dean does so by skilfully enabling the reader to accompany the thought and decision-making processes of his ordinary characters as they are faced with out-of-the-ordinary predicaments.

Although some of the English colloquialisms ("tizz", "miffed") occasionally jar with the Munich setting, The Crooked Cross reads briskly and the playwright in Dean ensures that the protagonists' body language - their gestures and poses - makes a significant contribution to the plot's energetic pace.

The novel's backdrop is interwoven with the colourful threads of German Expressionism and the frequent place, street and venue names provide ample reference points for readers familiar with Munich.

Peeling back the layers of the present to reveal the Munich of the 1930s, The Crooked Cross makes absorbing reading and is a compelling historical novel with a wide appeal: a warmly recommended read for Munich residents and visitors. It also brings moments of the past into the present, however, and in doing so extends its historical relevance beyond the city limits of Munich today.