Jean Moulin

Jean Moulin was a French civil servant who became one of the most important organisers of the Resistance. Sent back to occupied France on behalf of Charles de Gaulle, he worked to coordinate rival resistance movements and helped create the National Council of the Resistance in 1943.

Moulin was arrested at Caluire-et-Cuire near Lyon on 21 June 1943 during a meeting of resistance leaders and was tortured by the Gestapo before dying in German custody. Alex Gerlis’s Agent in the Shadows uses the betrayal and arrest surrounding this historical event as part of its espionage plot. Moulin’s identity and arrest are documented; fictional agents, conversations and the novel’s traitor hunt are imaginative reconstruction.