The
Paris Agent : A World War II Mystery
Kelly
Rimmer
On Sale Date: July 11, 2023
9781525826689
Trade Paperback
$18.99 USD
368 pages
ABOUT
THE BOOK:
For fans of fast-paced historical thrillers
like Our Woman in Moscow and The Rose Code, Rimmer’s brilliant new novel
follows three female SOE operatives as their lives intersect in occupied
France, and the double agent who controls their fate.
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, an
aging Marcel Augustin is reflecting on his life during those perilous,
exhilarating years as a British SOE operative in occupied France—in particular
the agent who saved his life during a mission gone wrong, whose real name he
never knew, nor whether she survived the war. Piqued by her father’s memories,
Marcel’s daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers that resurrects the
unrest and uncertainty from that period of his life. What follows is the story
of Eloise, Josie and Virginia, three otherwise ordinary, average women whose
lives intersect in 1943 when they’re called up by the SOE for deployment in
France. Taking enormous risks to support the allied troops with very little
information or resources, the three women have no idea they’re at the mercy of
a double agent within their ranks who's causing chaos within the French
circuits, whose efforts will affect the outcome of their lives.
As Charlotte’s search for answers continues,
new suspicions are raised about the identity of the double agent, with
unsettling clues pointing to her father, and more mysteries are unearthed from
the last days of the war about the eventual fates of Eloise, Josie and
Virginia.
BUY
LINKS:
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-paris-agent-kelly-rimmer/18794141?ean=9781525826689
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-paris-agent-kelly-rimmer/1143459526?ean=9781525826689
Books A Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Paris-Agent/Kelly-Rimmer/9781525826689
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Agent-Kelly-Rimmer/dp/1525826689
Sneak Peek Excerpt:
Prologue
ELOISE
Germany
October, 1944
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. Only upon closer inspection would a
passerby have seen the handcuffs that secured us, our wrists resting at our
sides, between us not because we meant to hide them but because we were
exhausted, and they were too heavy to rest on our bony thighs. Only at a second
glance would they have noticed the emaciated frames or the clothes that didn’t
quite fit, or the scars and healing wounds each of us bore after months of
torture and imprisonment.
I was handcuffed to a petite woman I knew first as Chloe,
although in recent weeks, we had finally shared our real names with one
another. It was entirely possible that she was the best friend I’d ever
known—not that there was much competition for that title, given friendship had
never come easy to me. Two British women, Mary and Wendy, sat opposite us. They
had trained together, as Chloe and I had trained together, and like us, they
had been “lucky enough” to recently find themselves imprisoned together too.
Mary and Wendy appeared just as shell-shocked as Chloe and I were by the events
of that morning.
As our captors had reminded us often since our arrests, we
were plainclothes assassins and as such, not even entitled to the basic
protections of the Geneva Convention. So why on earth had we been allowed the
luxury of a shower that morning, and why had we been given clean civilian
clothes to wear after months in the filthy outfits we’d been wearing since our
capture? Why were they transporting us by passenger train, and in a luxurious
private carriage, no less? This wasn’t my first time transferring between
prisons since my capture. I knew from bitter personal experience that the usual
travel arrangement was, at best, the crowded, stuffy back end of a covered
truck or at worst, a putrid, overcrowded boxcar.
But this carriage was modern and spacious, comfortable and
relaxed. The leather seats were soft beneath me and the air was clean and light
in a way I’d forgotten air should be after months confined to filthy cells.
“This could be a good sign,” I whispered suddenly. Chloe
eyed me warily, but my optimism was picking up steam now, and I turned to face
her as I thought aloud. “I bet Baker Street has negotiated better conditions
for us! Maybe this transfer is a step toward our release. Maybe that’s why…” I
nodded toward our only companions in the carriage, seated on the other side of
the aisle. “Maybe that’s why she’s here. Could it be that she’s been
told to keep us safe and comfortable?”
Chloe and I had had little to do with the secretary at
Karlsruhe Prison, but I had seen her in the hallway outside of our cell many
times, always scurrying after the terrifyingly hostile warden. It made little
sense for a secretary to accompany us on a transfer, but there she was, dressed
in her typical tweed suit, her blond hair constrained in a thick bun at the
back of her skull. The secretary sat facing against the direction of travel,
opposite the two armed guards who earlier had marched me and Chloe onto the
covered truck at the prison, then from the covered truck onto the platform to
join the train. The men had not introduced themselves, but like all agents with
the British Special Operations Executive, I’d spent weeks memorizing German
uniforms and insignias. I knew at a glance that these were low-ranking Sicherheitsdienst
officers—members of the SD. The Nazi intelligence agency.
The secretary spoke to the guards, her voice low but her
tone playful. She held a suitcase on her lap, and she winked as she tapped it.
The men both brightened, surprised smiles transforming their stern expressions,
then she theatrically popped the suitcase lid to reveal a shockingly generous
bounty of thick slices of sausages and chunks of cheese, a large loaf of sliced
rye bread and…was that butter? The scent of the food flooded the carriage as
the secretary and the guards used the suitcase as a table for their breakfast.
It was far too much food for three people but I knew they’d
never share it with us. My stomach rumbled violently, but after months
surviving on scant prison rations, I was desperate enough that I felt lucky to
be in the mere presence of such a feast.
“I heard the announcement as we came onto the carriage— this
train goes to Strasbourg, doesn’t it? Do you have any idea what’s waiting for
us there? This is all a bit…” Wendy paused, gnawing her lip anxiously. “None of
it makes sense. Why are they treating us so well?”
“This is the Strasbourg train,” Chloe confirmed cautiously.
There was a subtle undertone to those words—something hesitant, concerned. I
frowned, watching her closely, but just then the secretary leaned toward the
aisle. She spoke to us in rapid German and pointed to the suitcase in her lap.
Had we done something wrong? More German words but it may as
well have been Latin to me, because I spoke only French and English. Just then,
the secretary huffed impatiently and pushed the suitcase onto the empty seat
beside her as she stood. She held a plate toward me, and when I stared at it
blankly, she waved impatiently toward Chloe and spoke again in German.
“What…”
“She wants you to take it,” Chloe translated for me, and I
took the plate with my one free hand, bewildered. Chloe passed it to Wendy, and
so on, until we all held plates in our hands. The secretary then passed us fat
slices of sausage and cheese and several slices of bread each. Soon, our plates
were filled with the food, each of us holding a meal likely more plentiful than
we’d experienced since our arrival in France.
“She’s toying with us,” Mary whispered urgently. “She’ll
take it back. She won’t let us eat it so don’t get your hopes up.”
I nodded subtly—I’d assumed the same. And so, I tried to
ignore the treasure sitting right beneath my nose. I tried not to notice how
garlicky and rich that sausage smelled, how creamy the cheese looked, or how
the butter was so thick on the bread that it might also have been cheese. I
told myself the increasing pangs in my stomach were just part of the torture
and the smartest thing I could do was to ignore them altogether, but the longer
I held the plate, the harder it was to refocus my mind on anything but the pain
in my stomach and the feast in my hands that would bring instant and lasting
relief.
When all the remaining food had been divided between us
prisoners, the secretary waved impatiently toward the plates on our laps, then
motioned toward her mouth.
“Eat!” she said, in impatient but heavily accented English.
Chloe and I exchanged shocked glances. Conditions in
Karlsruhe Prison were not the worst we’d seen since our respective captures,
but even so, we’d been hungry for so long. The starvation was worse for Chloe
than me. She had a particularly sensitive constitution and ate a narrow range
of foods in order to avoid gastric distress. Since our reunion at the prison,
we’d developed a system of sharing our rations so she could avoid the foods
which made her ill but even so, she remained so thin I had sometimes worried
I’d wake up one morning to find she’d died in her sleep.
“What can you eat?” I asked her urgently.
She looked at our plates then blurted, “Sausage. I’ll eat
the sausage.”
For the next ten minutes we prisoners fell into silence
except for the occasional, muffled moan of pleasure and relief as we devoured
the food. I was trying to find the perfect compromise between shoving it all
into my mouth as fast as I could in case the secretary changed her mind and
savoring every bite with the respect a meal like that commanded. By the time my
plate was empty and my surroundings came back to me, the guards and the
secretary were having a lovely time, laughing amongst themselves and chatting
as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
For a long while, we prisoners traveled in silence, holding
our plates on our laps at first, then after Wendy set the precedent, lifting
them to our mouths to lick them clean. Still, the guards chatted and laughed
and if I judged their tones correctly, even flirted with the secretary? It
gradually dawned on me that they were paying us very little attention.
“How far is Strasbourg? Does anyone know?” I asked. Wendy
and Mary shook their heads as they shrugged, but Chloe informed me it was
hundreds of miles. Her shoulders had slumped again despite the gift of the
food, and I nudged her gently and offered a soft smile. “We have a long journey
ahead. Good. That means we have time for a pleasant chat while our bellies are
full.”
By unspoken agreement, we didn’t discuss our work with the
Special Operations Executive (SOE). It was obvious to me that each of the other
women had been badly beaten at some point—Wendy was missing a front tooth, Mary
held her left hand at an odd angle as if a fractured wrist had healed badly,
and Chloe… God, even if she hadn’t explained to me already, I’d have known just
looking at her that Chloe had been to hell and back. It seemed safe to assume
we had all been interrogated literally almost to death at some point, but there
was still too much at stake to risk giving away anything the Germans had not
gleaned from us already. So instead of talking about our work or our peculiar
circumstances on that train, we talked as though we weren’t wearing handcuffs.
As though we weren’t on our way to, at the very best, some slightly less
horrific form of imprisonment.
We acted as though we were two sets of friends on a casual
jaunt through the countryside. We talked about interesting features outside our
window—the lush green trees in the tall forests, the cultivated patches of
farmland, the charming facades of cottages and apartments on the streets
outside. Mary cooed over a group of adorable children walking to school, and
Wendy talked about little shops we passed in the picturesque villages. Chloe
shared longing descriptions of the foods she missed the most—fresh fruit and
crisp vegetables, eggs cooked all manner of ways, herbs and spices and salt. I
lamented my various aches and pains and soon everyone joined in and we talked
as if we were elderly people reflecting on the cruelty of aging, not four
twenty-somethings who had been viciously, repeatedly beaten by hateful men.
I felt the warmth of the sunshine on my face through the
window of the carriage and closed my eyes, reveling in the simple pleasures of
fresh air and warm skin and the company of the best friend I’d ever known. I
even let myself think about the secretary and that picnic, and feel the relief
that I was, for the first time in months, in the company of a stranger who had
shown kindness toward me. I’d almost forgotten that was something people did
for one another.
I’d never been an especially cheerful sort of woman and I’d
never been an optimist, but those past months had forced me to stare long and
hard at the worst aspects of the human condition and I’d come to accept a
certain hopelessness even when it came to my own future. But on that train,
bathed in early morning sunlight and basking in a full stomach and pleasant
company, my spirits lifted until they soared toward something like hope.
For the first time in months, I even let myself dream that
I’d survive to embrace my son Hughie again. Maybe, even after all I’d seen and
done, the world could still be good. Maybe, even after everything, I could find
reason to have faith.
Excerpted from The Paris
Agent by Kelly Rimmer, Copyright © 2023 by Lantana Management PTY Ltd. Published by Graydon House
Books.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
Kelly Rimmer is the worldwide, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of The German Wife, The Warsaw Orphan, and The Things We Cannot Say. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, two children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. Please visit her at www.Kelly.Rimmer.com
SOCIAL
LINKS:
Author website: https://www.kellyrimmer.com/
Facebook: @Kellymrimmer
Twitter: @KelRimmerWrites
Instagram: @kelrimmerwrites
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