This is a sequel to the book I read yesterday, Iron Duke, and it's much of the same. This time, Jim is off to the Olympics, where he meets a girl and gets an unpleasant close-up look at the political side of athletics. There's a double dose of the last, as it's not only the manipulations of his national athletics association that he has to put up with. This particular Olympics is held in 1936 Berlin, and the creeping realisation that Hitler's turning that country into a mob underpins a lot of the text.

The edition I read has a somewhat defensive introduction that explains how Jim's struggles with his national association is a nutshell comparison to the wider political issues - I'm not sure that's necessary. It seems a little obvious to me, but then this book is aimed at younger readers and was first published in 1939 so perhaps, during the war years, people read it differently.