CODE NAME HÉLÈNE by Ariel Lawhon

Among the plethora of recent novels about women working in counterintelligence during wartime (The Lost Girls of Paris, The Book of Lost Names), this one stands out and ranks right up there with Transcription.  Plus this book is about real-life heroine Nancy Wake and proves that historical fiction does not have to be poorly written or trite.  I find that some popular historical fiction authors are good researchers but not necessarily good storytellers.  This novel, however, is gripping and has a juicy love story to boot.  The book follows two timelines that are only a few years apart, and they converge in a very nifty fashion at the end of the novel, with the earlier timeline giving us a broader perspective on characters that we know in the later timeline.  My only beef with this novel is that a wholly fictional character, Marceline, is somewhat overdone as a villain, and I think the author should have stuck to the facts at the end, instead of making Marceline so vicious.  The story opens with a hungover Nancy preparing to parachute into the French countryside to coordinate the retrieval of airlifted weapons and supplies to the Resistance during WWII.  In the earlier timeline she meets Henri Fiocca, the love of her life, and we also follow her progression from journalist to a woman of great strength and courage who risks everything to defeat the Nazis.  The unspeakable acts of cruelty that Nancy witnesses are almost too vivid, but her various hair-raising experiences and narrow escapes make for an edge-of-your-seat read.  I recommend that you not spoil the story by reading about Nancy Wake beforehand.