The English Agent

by Clare Harvey

First published 2017

Amazon

4.1(883)

After surviving the Blitz, Edie is recruited into the Special Operations Executive and trained for clandestine work in occupied France. Under the codename Yvette she is parachuted into France and drawn into the dangerous routines of resistance work in Paris: false identities, secret communications, sabotage and the constant possibility of betrayal. In London, the real SOE intelligence officer Vera Atkins is fictionalised as the F Section handler responsible for agents sent across the Channel.

The novel moves between field operations in France and the administrative world behind them in Britain, showing how individual agents depended on networks of couriers, wireless operators and handlers. When contact with Yvette becomes uncertain, the decisions made in London acquire immediate consequences in occupied France. Harvey uses Vera Atkins's documented wartime role as a historical foundation while placing her within an invented story of loyalty, secrecy and the personal cost of clandestine service.