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The Bad Penny: Friends and Traitors

17 Monday Sep 2018

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Review: Friends and Traitors, by John Lawton
Atlantic, 2017. 341 pp. $26

If I were to describe a thriller whose central incident doesn’t happen until around page 200, and whose back-story-laden narrative revolves around an essentially harmless, flamboyantly foolish turncoat spy, you would likely decide that the book was a plodding, pointless tale, not worth your time.

In this case, though, you’d be wrong. The back story reveals England of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties with remarkable vividness, brio, and wit, focusing on, among other issues, laws and prejudice against homosexual behavior, and the equally prejudiced mindset about national security and how to act in its name. You see these come alive through a compelling protagonist, Frederick Troy, not your ordinary copper. Born to Russian émigrés under the name Troitsky, Troy, as even his girlfriends call him, walked away from a scholarship to Oxford to join the London police force and serve in the East End, a tough patch. Recruited to Scotland Yard above more experienced candidates in the late 1930s, he has been solving murders ever since, up until 1958, when the forward action of Friends and Traitors begins. Like many fictional detectives, he sails very close to the wind, and unscrupulous, vicious characters have a way of disappearing when he’s around, whether they belong to the police force or the criminals. So far, he has covered his tracks, but not without attracting suspicion.

Henry_Labouchère, the British parliamentarian whose amendment to an 1885 law intended to combat prostitution made “gross indecency” between males a criminal act. During the 1940s and 1950s especially, the police went out of their way to enforce it.

What threatens to undo Troy at this juncture is his friendship with Guy Burgess, later known as a member of the infamous Cambridge Five spy ring; but, as this portrayal would have it, Burgess is very much a junior partner in that game. Still, when he defects with Donald Maclean in 1951, their flight embarrasses and surprises the British intelligence community and causes a rift with its American counterparts. Troy, who has known Burgess for decades, first through family connections, and later because the man keeps crossing his path like a bad penny, has always been suspect for this association. But Troy thinks that what MI5 and Special Branch really object to, aside from shame at their own lapse, is Burgess’s unapologetic, open homosexuality, which to Troy shouldn’t be considered a crime.

Moreover, Burgess’s inability to keep a secret, and the relatively short time he was working for the Foreign Office, suggest he’s not much of a threat. Self-absorbed, boorish, insulting, and vain, yes; but since when are those qualities treasonous? Nevertheless, when Burgess lets it be known in 1958 that he wishes to return to England, several people whom both he and Troy know wind up dead, and others are running scared, including at least one former lover of Troy’s.

From there, the pieces that Lawton has laid in place with seeming casualness turn out to matter in ingenious, unexpected ways, so cleverly that not even Troy understands the depth of his troubles before they arrive. The sentence, “Someone was following Troy,” recurs constantly. For a man of his experience, that’s almost an insult. And since he never takes his medicine quietly, he leads his watchdogs in Special Branch up hill and down dale, at one point leaving a Lewis Carroll poem in a tree for them to puzzle over. Very snarky. But what else would you expect from the youngest child with two twin sisters named Sasha and Masha, each of whom has a particular brand of acting badly, and an oh-so-righteous older brother, Battle of Britain hero, member of Parliament, and all that, who may be prime minister one day? It’s always been Troy’s job to be different in a family of individualists, and he does so with a sharp sense of humor.

Then there’s the prose, which evokes myriad times and places, as with this description of the London Blitz:

It seemed to Troy that the night sky was short on sky’s own colour — blue. Reds it had aplenty, from the bright, post-office-van scarlet of the flames that leapt heavenward from burning buildings to the colouring-book-and-wax-crayon carmine of tracers and the paintbox burnt orange of ack-ack shells popping uselessly among the beaten-metal pewter hue of the barrage balloons. Incendiaries burnt white to silver, and the searchlights sliced up the night with long fingers of pure, clear light. Rarely had he seen a plane hit, either ours or theirs, but when it happened every colour in the rainbow might burst forth.

My only quibble is Burgess himself, who’s so unappealing that if I were Troy, I’d run in the other direction. At times Troy does, yet he also seems fascinated, and I’m not sure why. Burgess’s willingness to say what no one else will? Troy’s stubborn refusal to shun a man whom his conventional older brother has warned him about? Hard to know, but I still recommend Friends and Traitors.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Jewish Brother Against Brother: All Other Nights

21 Monday Aug 2017

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Review: All Other Nights, by Dara Horn
Norton, 2009. 363 pp. $15

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” So goes the first of the Four Questions asked at the Passover seder by the youngest person there.

And that youngest person, in many ways, is nineteen-year-old Jacob Rappaport, who flees his New York mercantile family in 1861 to join the army. He’s escaping an arranged marriage in which he’s a financial pawn–traded like human chattel, if you will–and the army seems the best alternative. It never occurs to him that he could simply decline the marriage, nor does he anticipate the Civil War, which breaks out a few months later.

The following year, 1862, the word no eludes Private Rappaport once more when his superiors in the Eighteenth New York press him to undertake a mission behind enemy lines in New Orleans. They want him to poison his Uncle Harry, who, their intelligence tells them, leads a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Vulnerable to their shaming, anti-Semitic blandishments, Jacob agrees, which of course only confirms them in their prejudices. And when he returns from this mission, they’ve got another assignment–inveigle his way into the home of a Jewish Virginia merchant he’s met through his father’s business and marry one of the daughters. They’re Confederate spies, apparently.

This sounds absolutely preposterous, but the genius of All Other Nights is that when you read it, your disbelief drops away. It’s not just that Horn has thoroughly researched daily life during the Civil War, Jewish communities of the 1860s, espionage, manners, or a dozen other things, though she has. It’s that I believe how lost Jacob is, how he longs for the same things as the people he’s working to betray, those human qualities so precious in wartime–kindness, a ready ear, acceptance, love. He’s enchanted to find that those qualities still exist, and he’s not being two-faced when he offers them in return, which makes him sympathetic.

He thought of the filthy camps where he had slept and eaten for most of the past year, the mud-coated tents and the vomit-stained blankets on ordinary nights, and then the choking smell of already rotting flesh on those howling twilit evenings when he had clawed his way off battlefields, the night air riven with the long screams of those not yet dead. It suddenly seemed impossible to him that those places and this room could exist in the same world. He looked around the table at the faces of the chattering Levy daughters and imagined that this room was a sealed compartment in time and space, with an entire world contained within it–an alternative world, independent from reality, where this house with its lights and laughter and beautiful girls had somehow, impossibly, become his home.

Film enthusiasts will notice that Jacob’s attempt to marry into this family parallels an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Notorious (in which Ingrid Bergman marries Claude Rains and reports what happens in the house to Cary Grant). But if you’re going to borrow, take from the best, and Horn has done brilliantly, alternately thwarting and rewarding Jacob so often he doesn’t know which way is up. It’s “no–and furthermore” taken to dizzying heights. Hitchcock would be delighted.

Judah P. Benjamin, circa 1856, then U.S. senator from Louisiana (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Into this mix, Horn throws Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederacy’s secretary of state, a fascinating figure. Through him, as with Jacob, she shows how difficult it was to be Jewish, but even more, a Jewish statesman. Horn gives Benjamin an eloquent line, “All Hebrews know that there is nothing honorable about subjugation and defeat,” an epitaph for the Lost Cause that one wishes the South had embraced.

I’ve complained when authors use their characters’ Jewishness as a tool or symbol, and that it feels skin-deep at best. But here, the Jews are real, as is their complex calculus required to navigate a hostile, bigoted world. Every move Jacob makes becomes freighted with anxious meanings, except when he’s among his brethren. But since those brethren are southern, he still can’t be himself, so the tension never lets up.

Despite my admiration for All Other Nights, I think the book could have been shorter; there’s a packed feel to it. The New Orleans segment, Jacob’s first adventure, seems unnecessary and less plausible than the rest. But that part does contain a beautiful scene, a Passover seder in which slaves bring to the table the matzo and bitter herbs, reminders of biblical slavery in Egypt. How Jacob’s southern cousins manage to overlook the irony fascinates him–another way of saying that even if it’s packed too full, All Other Nights always has something to say.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Keeping Secrets: Exposure

25 Monday Jul 2016

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Review: Exposure, by Helen Dunmore
Atlantic, 2016. 391 pp. $25

Simon Callington is a decent man, the dutiful Englishman. He’s a devoted husband and father of three, bright but not brilliant, content with modest pleasures, too self-effacing to say no when maybe he should, too slow to realize that others don’t play fair. In other words, Simon is a perfect fall guy. And since this is 1960, when Soviet spies are turning up inside the British government–in fact, his immediate superiors in the Naval Department have been “batting for the other side” for years–a fall guy can be useful.

Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby worked for British Intelligence but was actually a Soviet agent. One of the so-called Cambridge Five, men who attended that institution and spied for the USSR, Philby defected in 1963. This image comes from a 1990 Soviet postage stamp (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby worked for British Intelligence but was actually a Soviet agent. One of the so-called Cambridge Five, men who attended that institution and spied for the USSR, Philby defected in 1963. This image comes from a 1990 Soviet postage stamp (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The story all starts innocently enough. Giles Holloway, an old friend, mentor, and immediate superior, calls Simon at an inconvenient hour to have him rescue a file from a place it should never have gone. Simon agrees, only because he can’t say no to Giles, part of which goes back to their days at Cambridge, when they were lovers. But Simon will have ample time to wish he had said no, because one look at the file tells him that neither man should have seen it, and Giles’s briefcase, which Simon comes across, contains more of the same. Rather than return the file to the office, as Giles wants, Simon brings it home. From there, his life unravels.

With Exposure, Dunmore proves again why she’s among my favorite writers. She’s written a thriller as gripping as any, using Simon’s very ordinariness and decency to devastating effect. There’s no cloak-and-dagger here, no secret that will explode the universe if it falls into the wrong hands, no mole who must be uncovered before he or she compromises national security. Rather, it’s how those who act to protect national security are destroying the decency and moral compass that Simon represents, and they do so without a second thought, certain of their righteousness. So yes, the world is at stake after all, for what happens when decency and moral compass mean nothing?

Consequently, Exposure has to do with how the government Simon serves repays his loyalty, and how they hurt him, his wife, and children. Once suspicion falls on him, he has no friends, and the people he might have counted on for support, like Giles, will gladly sacrifice him to their own interests. Simon’s only ally is his wife, Lily, a woman of great resourcefulness. However, Simon refuses to tell her anything that might compromise her, and Lily, who can be difficult to reach, has a secret of her own that she won’t share.

Dunmore excels here, deriving so much tension from unwillingness or inability to communicate that at times you want to howl. But there are good reasons for it, which, typical of her fiction, come from within the characters. Lily, a German Jew by birth, grew up living “in fear before she knew why she was afraid . . . knowing that people hated her,” and though she escaped her native country, she can’t escape herself. Once Simon is arrested, Lily rebuffs her friends, believing that she mustn’t taint them, and concentrates on protecting her children as best she can.

Another thing I like is how Dunmore contrasts the offhand, charismatic Giles with his mousy, submissive underling. Early on, Giles observes:

We aren’t meant to see ourselves as others see us. In fact it would be a bloody dull world if we did, because no one would ever make a fool of himself again. We might as well accept that we’re put on this earth to make unwitting entertainment for other fellow men, and get on with doing so.

All that sounds very nice, blasé wisdom for the Cambridge common room. But without ever saying so, Dunmore shows what happens when Simon, dull as he may be in comparison with Giles, actually tries to connect with life instead of looking at it as a game. His plight may furnish entertainment for the men who want to sink him, but everyone else is in great pain.

The only false note in this portrayal concerns Simon’s sexuality. If he was homosexual at Cambridge and found it exciting, why has he given it up? He may think of it as a youthful road he no longer prefers to travel, and his marriage is plainly substantial. Yet Giles still exerts a pull over him. Also, Giles’s boss, Julian, though a master of the nasty innuendo and capable of intimidating just about anybody, seems two-dimensional. Almost every time he appears, the adjective cold sticks to him like Arctic ice on bare skin, but that doesn’t satisfy me.

The first book I reviewed for this blog was The Lie, a lyrical, heart-rending tale of rootlessness that’s still my favorite of all those I’ve written about here. Though Exposure deals with a different subject, it’s a worthy companion, and I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Judicial Murder: The Hours Count

16 Monday Nov 2015

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Review: The Hours Count, by Jillian Cantor
Riverhead, 2015. 356 pp. $27

In June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to the electric chair, accused of conspiracy to commit espionage, the only American civilians ever to pay with their lives for that crime. The FBI charged Julius with having passed atomic secrets to the Soviets, and Ethel, with having typed up the papers. The case rested on a confession by Ethel’s brother, an apparent plea bargain for which he served ten years in prison. Decades later, he admitted that the prosecution had encouraged him to implicate Ethel in order to save his wife, and that he had lied to do so.

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg immediately after their conviction, 1951 (Roger Higgins, New York World-Telegram and the Sun, public domain by gift to the Library of Congress)

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg immediately after their conviction, 1951 (Roger Higgins, New York World-Telegram and the Sun, public domain by gift to the Library of Congress).

The Hours Count is a deeply disturbing novel that compels the reader to care about these doomed people, victims of a national hysteria that Cantor captures to a T. Moreover, she does so by threading politics lightly through her narrative until the last few chapters, underlining how the hysteria snowballed, catching the Rosenbergs (and just about everyone else) by surprise. Cantor conveys all this by focusing on the Rosenbergs’ loving marriage, dedication to their children, and ordinary kindness and generosity. In the milieu she creates, it defies imagination that Ethel could have been a spy, known that her husband was, or that they should have been electrocuted when all the other convicted defendants went to jail.

Cantor tells her story through Millie Stein, a down-the-hall neighbor of the Rosenbergs who sees her friend Ethel as a person much like herself, beset with day-to-day problems of caring for children, managing on an ever-tighter budget, and ignoring vicious insults from godawful relatives. For instance, if a child misbehaves or, as in Millie’s son’s case, hasn’t learned to talk by age three, it’s obviously the mother’s fault. Her mother and mother-in-law, among others, point the phrase why can’t you be like ____? at Millie like a weapon, and she feels isolated and friendless. What a superb metaphor: Even before the FBI comes knocking, there’s already an inquisition going on, and her family are the hooded judges, from whose indictment there’s no appeal. It’s as if the government or American society were a family, and the real enemy within are the opportunistic vigilantes, whether they’re J. Edgar Hoover or your grudge-holding siblings.

Millie’s dilemma, once she can no longer ignore the illogical, even nonsensical, events that take place around her–including her brutish, Russian husband’s peculiar work habits–is what to do and whom to trust. She wants to do the right thing, but it’s hard to tell what that is. As a naive, unsophisticated narrator, she can’t help believing that she’s to blame for her child’s tantrums and inability to talk, and in her yearning to help him, Millie makes some bad choices. For one, the reader knows long before she does that the psychotherapist who purports to treat her boy has another, very different agenda in mind, which includes seducing her.

That’s a literary pet peeve of mine, therapists who sleep with their patients. Yes, I know it happens in real life, and Millie craves the kindness her husband refuses to give her, so she’s a ready target. But the pervasive stereotype of the predatory, manipulative doctor of the mind is yet another form of hysteria, and though it serves Cantor’s plot, there are problems with it here.

One is Millie’s credulousness, which seems extreme. It takes her forever and a day to figure out the real sources of trouble, and once she does, she keeps trusting the wrong people. I wanted her to have more backbone, or at least a better head on her shoulders.

I also question the author’s decision to split up the chapter describing the executions and dole it out in pieces. We already know the Rosenbergs will die; in fact, the first line of the book jacket says so. Historical fiction about well-known events rests on the telling, at which Cantor does beautifully. Why, then, in the first chapter, does Millie attempt to get into Sing Sing the fatal night (which, the author admits, is highly improbable) and influence the proceedings? The vague portents mentioned in this chapter achieve nothing, in my view.

Just tell the story and have the confidence that the reader will follow. The Hours Count is one that demands to be read.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Hunting Dissidents, and the Truth: The Seeker

10 Monday Aug 2015

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Review: The Seeker, by S. G. MacLean
Quercus (UK), 2015. 398 pp. £14

A politician once said of Germany that it took half the country to control the other half (and he was speaking around 1900, well before either world war). I get the same chilling impression of midseventeenth-century London from The Seeker, a mystery that involves murder, royalist conspiracies, and the terror of speaking one’s mind.

Cover by Henry Steadman (Courtesy Quercus Books, UK).

Cover by Henry Steadman (Courtesy Quercus Books, UK).

It’s 1654, and after a fractious, savage civil war, Oliver Cromwell has seized power, employing a vast, pervasive spy network to root out anything he considers subversive. His most ubiquitous, feared agent is Damian Seeker, who seems to know whatever you shouldn’t have done, when, and with whom. So if you’ve spoken against the Lord Protector Cromwell’s joyless, repressive regime; longed for the Stuart monarchy to return; written a poem extolling liberty; or merely sat in the same room as someone who’s done any of these, when The Seeker comes for you–and he will–don’t bother to deny a thing. It’s better not to.

However, what makes Seeker more than an extraordinarily energetic, gifted goon is a passion for truth, no matter where it leads. Consequently, when an assassin fells John Winter, a soldier who enjoyed the Lord Protector’s favor and sat in his inner council, it’s more than a security breach. It’s also a murder case, and finding the killer matters, not only because he could strike again, but–well, because. And from the first, Seeker doubts that Elias Ellingworth is the killer, even if he was discovered near Winter’s body, holding the bloody knife, and even if he’s penned seditious pamphlets.

To find the real murderer, Seeker must follow a sinuous trail that quickly branches in several directions, all of which appear to threaten the regime. Coffee houses, the latest fad in London, are the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy, though they’re also places for free conversation on any topic under the sun. I like how MacLean plays this theme. Cromwell’s followers pretend that they have swept away a tyranny based on birth and replaced it with a temperate government that values merit. But, as Ellingworth insists, the Lord Protector has betrayed the democracy he once professed and instituted a tyranny of his own. That Seeker, a commoner of humble origins, hunts down dissidents to uphold an unjust, autocratic ruler lends the conflict a fitting irony.

Little is known about Seeker’s origins, though, for the man never talks about himself or his feelings, if he even has any. He’s all work. However, Maria Ellingworth, the imprisoned suspect’s sister, interests him, and I doubt I’m giving anything away by saying that the young woman’s naive honesty and directness slowly seep through his defenses. It’s obvious from the get-go, though anything but obvious how it will end.

That’s The Seeker’s greatest strength, I think. Except for a scene or two recounted out of order to withhold a secret, the novel is exceptionally well plotted, no mean trick, given the sheer number of characters. Further, MacLean excels at hiding whether certain key characters are friends or foes, sometimes up until the end. I could have done without a cliché action or two, as when Seeker holds off his men to battle a traitor in single combat, but that’s a minor quibble. I love the period details, which flow seamlessly through the narrative and lend atmosphere. The language does slip occasionally, though; I’m certain no seventeenth-century Englishman would have ever used the phrase liaise with.

Seeker’s also pretty thin as a character, yet he’s the deepest of the lot. Late in the novel–too late, I think–we’re told (not shown) why he’s so loyal to Cromwell, and why he loves order above all. But I’m not entirely persuaded, and I think it would have taken little to establish this in small ways throughout the narrative. Seeker has potential–why is he so fierce, and why does truth matter to him?–but this book doesn’t exploit his inner conflicts. Maybe in future installments, MacLean will show more of him and her other characters.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Seeker. In the interest of full reporting, let me add that the novel won the 2015 Crime Writers’ Association Endeavour Dagger for Historical Fiction.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher in return for an honest review.

How Historical Accuracy Matters: Madeleine’s War

01 Monday Jun 2015

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Review: Madeleine’s War, by Peter Watson
Doubleday, 2015. 367 pp. $27

It’s spring 1944, and Matthew Hammond, a colonel in British intelligence, has a torrid romance with the strikingly beautiful Madeleine Dirac, a French-Canadian woman he’s training for a very dangerous assignment. To prepare for the Allied invasion of France, rumored to be imminent, Madeleine will parachute into the country to help coordinate Resistance attacks on German transport and communications. Her survival chances are fifty-fifty, at best, so Matt can only hope that he’s taught the woman he loves the skills she’ll need to make it through.

Watson, who has written social and intellectual history and a couple novels, has taken a risk here. To tell this story, he’s abandoned both the nuts-and-bolts of Allied intelligence operations in France and its historical record, of which other fictional accounts include Simon Mawer’s Trapeze, Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers, and Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers. Such a departure can work, so long as the fiction feels compelling, fresh, authentic, and logical within itself. Depict deep characters whose struggles strike a chord, and it will matter less that the nuts and bolts don’t quite fit the historical template. Unfortunately, however, Madeleine’s War goes in the other direction, toward the ordinary, the predictable, the cliché.

Jacket photo Patricia Turner/Arcangel Images (Courtesy Nan Talese/Doubleday)

Jacket photo Patricia Turner/Arcangel Images (Courtesy Nan Talese/Doubleday)

Col. Hammond’s organization, SC2, is supposedly modeled after the Special Operations Executive, or SOE. But SC2 has peculiar ways of winning the war. Madeleine’s job interview consists of a night drop over the English countryside, which, as she soon learns, entails interrogation as a potential enemy agent, during which she’s stripped naked. (Never mind that as an untrained parachutist, she could have broken her neck, or that a soldier could have shot her, causing a security leak and a needless death.) The “mission” tells Matt all he wants to know, including her bra size, but does she resent being humiliated and turned into a sex object? No. During training in Scotland, Madeleine throws herself at him, finding further opportunities to remove her clothes. How, you may ask, does Matt have the time to train agents–only four at a crack, to boot–when he should be in London managing operations? Then again, how does anyone in SC2, let alone a senior officer, conduct an affair without getting court-martialed? Matt and Madeleine aren’t even discreet, taking a walk on a beach and a bicycle outing. Yet nobody raises an eyebrow, lending further evidence that this allegedly top-secret military operation is really a summer camp with occasional brisk exercise.

Consequently, the narrative must work overtime so that Matt and Madeleine can be together. The setup also allows Matt to narrate the rest of the novel from his office, denying the reader the chance to see Madeleine in action or even hear her own voice. It’s his war, not hers.

That pushes all the chips onto the romance, and it’s a bad bet. These people come straight out of a male fantasy in which the woman is gorgeous, undemanding, vivacious, and always willing, while (to reveal the predictable) the man has the chance to rescue her. That she’s something of a ninny–she admires Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s propaganda filmmaker, as “an opportunist”–doesn’t seem to matter.

Matt’s not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, himself. He constantly states the obvious and amazes himself and others with it, so that they come off no brighter than he is. But that’s partly because of the author’s narrative technique: In scene after scene, one character lectures another to advance the plot or reveal their past, often to say what they should both already know. And considering the security breaches that occur on virtually every page, if these people had actually led British intelligence, the Germans would have driven the Normandy invasion back into the Channel.

Which brings me to my final point, the novel’s trivial conception of espionage. To name only one example, when an ace agent of SC2 returns from two years in the field, Matt notices that he has a pock-marked face and a congenital stoop. It’s as if Matt has never seen him before–odd, if he trained the man–but it’s his reaction that matters here. The spymaster thinks, How brilliant; our agent is so obviously unathletic, unfit for military service, and that’s why the Germans thought him harmless.

But if the SOE had actually given this man a field assignment, he’d have posed an immediate risk to himself and others. An agent had to be fit, to conduct operations and stand a greater chance of escape, if necessary. His or her best–only–protection was to blend into the population. This fellow would have stuck out in any crowd, and the Gestapo would have spotted him right away. The word harmless wasn’t in their lexicon. They terrified a continent because they assumed that anyone could turn traitor, at any moment–and they’d be there when it happened.

That fear never shapes Madeleine’s War, never reaches the reader. I simply couldn’t connect with these shallow characters and their far-fetched actions and motives.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher, in return for an honest review.