About Today’s Title

When you think of spies one of the first names that will likely come to mind is James Bond, the fictional spy created by Ian Fleming, and then featured numerous times in films from the 60s through the early 2020s.

One of the real-life spies in this week’s book by Christine Kuehn was a fellow by the name of Dusko Popov. His risk-taking at the baccarat table was recreated in Fleming’s Casino Royale. That connection, and the fact that Kuehn’s father kept secrets for most of her life, led me to the choice for the song to feature in today’s book review title. The song is Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager’s theme song for The Spy Who Loved Me, the 10th James Bond film. You can watch the opening sequence of the film featuring Carly Simon’s performance of Nobody Does It Better on YouTube.

Loveable but imposing. Those are the words that Christine Kuehn uses to describe her father in the very first paragraph of Family of Spies, her debut book. He loved to tell stories but at the same time avoided relaying any tales about his own family history. Growing up, the Kuehns spent summer vacations with Christine’s mother’s side of the family. Christine knew her father had grown up in Hawaii, and had fought in World War II, but as for the rest of her father’s family all the young girl knew was that his father had died in a car crash, and his mother went back to Germany after World War II and died there. She had an aunt, her father’s sister, who he sometimes spoke of, but she had never met the aunt, who remained as mysterious as the rest of her father’s past.

In 1994 Christine Keuhn is raising a family of her own in suburban Maryland. One summer day she receives a letter in the mail from a screenwriter. The screenwriter writes that he’s looking for information about her grandfather. The screenwriter is working on a movie about World War II, including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the German spies who had a role in that tragedy. He wants to know what her then 70-year-old father might be able to tell him about his father, Otto Kuehn the Nazi.

Kuehn is stunned by the letter. Her father had always told her that his father had also served with the US armed forces during the war. Kuehn takes reassurance from her husband that “there are a lot of Kuehns in the phonebook” and that the screenwriter must have the wrong family. The next morning, she wakes up after a restless night. Slowly at first, and with little help from her father, who would prefer the memories remain buried, she begins the journey to uncover the story of her father’s family and their intimate ties with Nazi leadership. Her journey involves research in books, family history archives, and requesting materials including the FBI file on her grandfather, all beginning in a time before the world wide web.

Much of the rest of the book is taken up with Kuehn’s sharing of the story she uncovered, and what a story it is. I don’t want to reveal too much but let’s just say the facts of the story are compelling, and the way Kuehn tells it is almost like a novel. The amount of detail she’s uncovered, especially through the FBI files but later added to by family she discovers along the way, is amazing. She’s done a great job for a first-time author.

This is such a good book that I finished it in two sittings. If you like history told from a personal perspective, have an interest in World War II or are just looking for a good nonfiction story that reads like a novel, pick this one up.

RATING: Four and a Half Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: A daughter’s journey uncovering the true story of her family’s past as Nazi spies, that her father had kept secret for all of her life. A nonfiction that reads like a novel.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I read an advanced reviewer’s ebook copy courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher Celadon Books. The book will be publicly available next Tuesday, November 25, 2025.