An avid reader, Stephen's knowledge of Crime Fiction is fairly extensive, with The Golden Age is his greatest interest.
Occupied France May 1944 there is less than a month before the D Day landings begin. The German occupying forces are beginning to see their stranglehold on Europe weakening with losses in Italy and Russia. The resistance fighters are doing all they can to aid the Allies impending assault.
Involved in this resistance are a mother and daughter, the mother Lillian a baroness, lives in Normandy and her daughter Genevieve a popular singing star in Paris. Although Genevieve has been estranged from family for many years it is an overheard conversation that takes her back to her Normandy home.
Lillian and her husband Paul are in the local resistance movement while Genevieve uses her cover as a singer to work within an international spy network run by her manager Max, an officer in the British SOE. When Paul is killed and Lillian captured, helping to try to smuggle an injured British pilot to the coast, the war becomes personal can Genevieve rescue her mother before she is tortured to reveal her secrets?
Together with her elder sister Emmy she must try to find a way of getting her mother away from the German interrogators and to safety.
The contrast of the forced privations, degradation and miseries endured by the everyday French people with the lifestyles led by the privileged is a stark reminder of the inequities of war. Difficult and unsettling subjects such as the brutality toward civilians by their own countrymen and the torture of suspects are laid bare in this tale of heroines in daunting situations.
The fact that most of the home French population at that time was female means that women were playing almost all the roles in the resistance and carrying out many of the most dangerous missions.
Ms Robards creates an authentic feel and compelling view of what life under the Nazis Jackboot could have been like, the despair and desolation as loved ones are arrested and lives are threatened together with the exhilaration and hope burning in many French hearts to be rid of the oppressors is expertly highlighted.
This tense and gripping narrative had me hooked from the very beginning. The many dramatic, heart stopping moments together with the more emotional scenes draw you in to the dynamic plot.
