By Kelly Rimmer
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/4 (Goodreads: 4.13)
GENRE: Historical Fiction
PART OF A SERIES? No
WORTH READING? Yes
SUMMARY:
25 years after the end of WWII, Noah is still haunted by memories of his time as a fearless Allied operative in France. He has frustrating memory gaps due to a head injury and is desperate to thank the agent who saved his life, if only he can find him.
Noah’s daughter Charlotte determines to help Noah find the mysterious agent and help her father find peace. Her hunt leads her to uncover two ordinary women who became courageous spies on foreign soil. Women who, Charlotte discovers, were being betrayed, along with Noah, by a double agent.
Opening line: 'Perhaps at first glance, we might have looked like ordinary passengers: four women in civilian clothes, sitting in pairs facing one another, the private carriage of the passenger train illuminated by the golden light of a cloudless late-summer sunrise.'
This is a wonderful dual timeline novel by Australian author, Kelly Rimmer. As with all her historical fiction novels, The Paris Agent has clearly been thoroughly researched. When novels utilise the lives and actions of real people, the fiction tale comes across especially authentically. Based on several real agents, it tells the story of (fictional) SOE agents who underwent a dismal lack of training and had to persevere through starvation and torture, but who believed so wholeheartedly in what they were doing. It highlights the effects of war on not only the ordinary citizens but on the extraordinary ones, too – the people who survived as long as they could under extremely trying circumstances.
I will say that periodically I became a tad confused when reading The Paris Agent, so had to flick back through the book. This was because many of the characters had two names (their code name and their actual name) so it was hard to keep track of which code name went with which person.
The Paris Agent has a constant forward motion, with an underlying sense of urgency that simmers the whole time. The more contemporary sections had a different, slower feel, which balances the WWII sections perfectly.
Be prepared to be emotionally moved as you read this story, particularly in the last few chapters. The tale evoked every emotion in me throughout the reading, but it especially tugged at the heartstrings towards the end.
I can’t quite put my finger on why, but this wasn’t my favourite Kelly Rimmer book. However, I can unequivocally say that I highly recommend it – along with any of the following books authored by Kelly Rimmer. My favourites would be The German Wife, The Things we Cannot Say, The Warsaw Orphan and Truths I Never Told You. N.B: I cannot speak to Rimmer’s romance novels, as I don’t generally read romance.
Click here to purchase the paperback of The Paris Agent
If you’d like to try any of Kelly Rimmer’s other books:
Click here to purchase The German Wife
Click here to purhase The Things We Cannot Say
Click here to purchase the paperback of The Warsaw Orphan
Click here to purchase the paperback of Truths I Never Told You
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