A Time Without Shadows

November 29, 1999
The title's irony isn't apparent until halfway into the book; by the end, however, its reverberations are breathtaking. A young Scot raised in Paris, Philip Maclean is recruited in 1941 to run a Resistance operation in occupied France. After a year of performing modest, safe jobs, Philip is told by Churchill that an Allied invasion is imminent, and Philip's Scorpio network begins a major campaign of sabotage against the Germans. Philip is abruptly picked up by the Nazis and Scorpio wiped out; just before he's sent to Auschwitz, Philip learns that a German spy had been planted within Scorpio from the start. Forty years later Harry Chapman of British Intelligence is assigned to ferret out information in response to a question in Parliament about a secret agreement between Churchill and the Soviets that allowed the sacrifice of a non-government intelligence group. Although it's not Chapman's usual kind of job, he interviews a variety of survivors--Philip's French widow, an ex-Nazi officer, a crippled Resistance hero, a French dressmaker. Learning of the vicious competition between rival intelligence services, the professionals and the wartime amateurs, he realizes that he himself is in danger from ruthless spy veterans. Allbeury's ( A Wilderness of Mirrors ) tale is smoothly bleak.