I was browsing an antiques store near the Jersey Shore when this book cover caught my attention: “The Shocking Secret (The Content Assignment),” by Holly Roth. Looking at the cover, the drama is hyped up: this woman is tied to a chair, her head thrown back … is she in pain? Struggling to break lose of her tied hands? Who is the silhouette man, is he coming to save her, or is he the hostage-taker? The top of the book says in regards to the shocking secret, “to uncover it meant death.” Granted, the glory days of pulp fiction and these dramatic book covers are long before my time, but with no knowledge of what this book is about, would you buy it based on the cover art alone?
I have to admit, the more I look at it, the more curious I am. Who has the shocking secret? The woman, or the silhouette man?
A little research tells me that this book was published in 1954, which is just 9 years after the end of World War II, and this novel takes place in post-war Berlin, Germany. The woman we see here is a character named Ellen Content, and she is engaged to a man named John Terrant. She’s American, and Terrant is British, both working in Berlin, when she suddenly disappears. Terrant desperately looks for her, and is told by authorities that she has been assigned to some sort of secret mission, and she will contact him once it is complete. But he never hears from her again, and nothing happens until a year and a half later, when he gets a clue as to Ellen’s location. He must track her down as soon as possible! And only a few days after getting the initial clue, Terrant’s search for Ellen finds a situation with “a blaze of bullets!”
Okay, now you’ve got me intrigued! I want to know what the shocking secret is! But here’s another shocking secret: in looking up some biographical info about the author, Holly Roth, her life also included a shocking secret! Roth (1916-1964) was born in Chicago and grew up in Brooklyn and London, but regarded herself as a New Yorker. She eventually married, but her first husband died in a train accident – that’s a bit mysterious. She later remarried, this time to a Czech man named Josef Franta, “who traveled on a Swiss passport.” Hmm, that’s a bit mysterious as well. They bought a 49 foot long wooden boat, made in Norway and weighing 25 tons. That seems like a really heavy boat! Fanta puts the boat in Roth’s name, and she contributes $20,000 to provide upgrades. in 1964, Roth writes to her brother that she and her husband Fanta want to move to the United States, but the CIA has a file on him and they encounter difficulties. Later that same year, they launch their boat from Gibraltar and head towards the Canary Islands. Two days into the journey, they encounter a storm off the coast of Morocco. Franta explained that at approximately 4:00am, a force suddenly rocked the boat while Roth was above deck and he was below. Making his way up to the top to check on Holly, Franta see a large ship sailing away from his boat, and wonders if they had been rammed, knocking Holly overboard. He thinks he sees Holly in the water wearing a life jacket, but yelling in her direction gets no answer. He jumps into the water to save her, but was unsuccessful. Her body is lost and never found. The official report lists Roth’s cause of death as “accidental, presumed lost at sea and drowned.”
It seems like this real life story could have been written by an author in the same genre as Roth, who was known as a writer of spy fiction and detective novels. I’d say her death is the real shocking secret here!
All this from seeing a dramatic pulp fiction book cover in an antiques store … wow!