Madeleine's War

April 1, 2015

Spring 1944, Scotland. Col. Matt Hammond is in charge of training British agents to be parachuted into occupied France shortly before the Allied D-day invasion. During weeks of intensive instruction, Matt falls in love with one of the female recruits, Canadian Madeleine Dirac. Invalided himself, he has already lost one lover to the war but reluctantly tasks Madeleine with a near-suicidal mission. The Gestapo in Paris have broken several circuits of British agents, and she needs to determine if a double bluff has worked. Soon after the invasion, Madeleine disappears, and Matt himself is sent to Paris, his mission equally perilous. VERDICT Historian and novelist Watson (author of Gifts Of War and The Clouds Beneath the Sun, written under the pen name Mackenzie Ford) adheres as closely as possible to historical events while developing the romance between Matt and Madeleine. Unfortunately, this is "Matt's War" rather than Madeleine's, since the novel is narrated from his point of view, with too much exposition presented in wooden dialog. For those who enjoy historical novels set in the context of D-day.--Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2015
Whiskey is Colonel Matthew Hammond's vice, and the whiskey-colored eyes of French Canadian Madeleine Dirac prove to be a strong temptation. But Madeleine is one of the recruits he is training to work as a British agent in France in advance of the Allied invasion there in WWII. Their relationship unfolds between lessons in sabotage and encoding messages, the dangers of the task ahead shadowing their time together. Historian Watson's use of detail, down to the crinkle-free silk writing pads sewn into agents' clothes, heightens the atmosphere of intrigue. While Matthew comes across as straitlaced and military-minded, even when it comes to his attraction to Madeleine, calculating the outcomes of their interactions is consistent with his role in an agency where cunning is everything. Despite the book's title, the story follows Matthew as he engages in a war far from the actual fighting, where secrets and double agents abound, and those making the decisions have only incomplete information to go on. The resulting mix of romance and risk makes for a heady cocktail sure to be savored by historical-fiction readers interested in the war years.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)