Paris, May 1940. Jean Casson is a successful film producer whose comfortable life is overturned by the German invasion and the rapid defeat of France. As the capital adjusts to occupation, the cinema industry becomes entangled with censorship, collaboration and the demands of people who understand that Casson’s contacts and mobility may be useful for clandestine work.
A British intelligence assignment draws him beyond passive accommodation and forces him to judge whom he can trust among former colleagues, lovers, police and political intermediaries. The novel presents occupied Paris as a society in which compromise begins with ordinary necessities, then becomes progressively harder to distinguish from betrayal or resistance.
Jacqueline Winspear
20 books
James R. Benn
26 books