Reviewed by Emma Crowley
Paris, 1940. As Nazi soldiers march down the Champs Elysees, Noor’s heart is shattered. Her family is forced to flee their home to the safety of England, and as Noor watches the French coast disappear in the distance, she vows to do everything she can to stop Germany from devouring her beloved country.
Training as a wireless operative in England, Noor’s perfect French makes her the ideal candidate for undercover work in her beloved Paris, and she is soon assigned to an illustrious spy network led by a mysterious man named Prosper.
Day after day, Noor walks the treacherous streets of Paris looking for safe places to broadcast messages to London. But Nazi officers lurk around every corner, and Noor’s heart thunders in her chest as she evades detection, tightly clutching the briefcase containing her radio equipment. She knows it would take just one stop and search for her life to be over.
With each passing day her mission becomes more lethal as, one by one, her fellow agents are captured. Someone is betraying them, but who? And when Noor becomes the last agent in the network, can she keep the links with England alive, to help win the war?
Many thanks to Bookouture via NetGalley for my copy of The Last Agent in Paris to review and to Sharon for having my review on the blog.
The Last Agent in Paris by Sharon Maas has a long timescale starting in Russia in 1914 and taking us all the way to the end of World War Two and beyond. Based on the true story of Noor Inayat Khan who worked with the S.O.E (Special Operations Executive) as a wireless operator in Paris. This was a fascinating and engrossing story of one women’s determination to fulfil her duty and help rid the world of Hitler and the evil he inflicted upon it. The prologue is stark and straight to the point with a woman named Madeline being questioned at Avenue Foch which was the headquarters of the Gestapo in Paris. She is the last woman standing from a network and despite being questioned at length she is determined not to give anything away. Questions arose from even from reading the brief prologue. Who was this woman? How had she ended up in this situation? Is there any hope for her escape/freedom?
The reader is then taken back to Russia 1914 where Inayat and his wife Amina (who was originally from America) have just had their first child, a daughter named Noor. Noor means light or brightness. Her spirit is always shining but she has been born into a world of great turbulence with much upheaval and war. The family are pacifists and are followers of the Sufi movement. Music is the centre of their lives and they travel from place to place eventually settling in Paris having been gifted a house. Two brothers and a sister join Noor and the family is complete. As the chapters progress the reader can see that Noor is a dreamer and has a gullible nature and is fragile and delicate and as the years pass and the Nazi’s rise to power she will have to push these tendencies aside and become more in tune with what is going on around her.
After her father passes away, Noor being the eldest steps up when her mother falls apart. She does her best to ensure her siblings receive a good education and she continues to teach the ways her father preached. But deep within her there is something stirring, a sense of commitment to a grander cause. Some sort of calling, a duty to sacrifice herself for the good of others and this stays with her and only intensifies as the world once again heads towards war. Noor has many values and the strongest of these is loyalty, courage and sacrifice and when war is declared she can’t wait to join in and do her bit. At this point there as an extremely well written paragraph where her brother Vilayat explains to her why she as a woman can’t enlist. This was so well explained and justified and I found myself really agreeing with what he said but it only served to inspire Noor more.
The family are soon forced to flee Paris and the description of their journey to a French port in order to get to England where they had citizenship was harrowing and disturbing. But here is here Noor showed her reckless side. That when she is hell bent on doing something there is no stopping her and sometimes I just wanted someone to curtail her wings a bit and for her to have more caution for herself and those around her. Noor is never one to back down from a challenge even when she is told it can’t be done or it’s too risky. She is persistent and starts to show courage and strength. Soon, she goes against the odds and enrols for training and her intelligence is noted. She would be perfect for the secret work of the S.O.E. I loved reading all the details of her training and it just hit home even further for me that there were so many strands to the war machine and even just to train one woman took many months and so many people working together.
Noor was always at the centre of her family. She offered love and support but when her training is complete and she was literally being dropped into the lions den this was taken away from her family and in a way Noor suffered slightly as well. The plot really took on a life of its own when Noor returns to Paris to carry out her secret work. All the details of the network, who was involved, what they did and how they operated were fascinating. There was a great building up of tension and suspicion and with every turn of the page you feared what awaited you. The title of the book finally starts to come into play and the last few chapters are a race to discover what will happen and not knowing anything about the real-life Noor’s story meant that I was kept on the edge of my seat not knowing what the eventual outcome would be and I love that to be the case when I read books of this nature. My opinion of Noor did a complete 360 from the first few chapters and the last few chapters made me truly comprehend what a remarkable and exceptional woman she was.
Overall, the story is very well written and researched and it’s evident that that the author is very passionate about the subject matter. Initially, I did think that it took some time to get going, to get the actual crux of the story-that being Noor’s arrival in Paris to carry out the work that she had been trained for. This only happens well after the midway point of the book. I found myself thinking up to that point that things were quite long winded and over explained with too much unnecessary detail. I was trying to decipher what could potentially be relevant to the plot and what I could cast aside.
But it was only as I reached that point where Noor finally landed in Paris that I realised all the information and background story had been essential and in fact a brilliant picture of Noor as a person had been built up and of her family and their customs and beliefs. All her experiences growing up and all the knowledge and wisdom imparted from both her father and mother had moulded and shaped the woman she was when her calling finally came to fruition. Yes, I found her to be reckless at times and as danger was lurking at every turn she was a bit too blasé about keeping herself safe. But deep down beneath it all she was a woman fuelled by a very strong fire that would not be quashed until she had achieved her objectives and she fought and fought until the bitter end.
The Last Agent in Paris is a brilliant homage to an incredible woman and Sharon Maas should be proud of her achievements in writing this book which in her end notes she has stated that she has wanted to write about Noor for quite some time. The historical notes at the end were a fantastic addition and further enhanced my understanding and appreciation for the story that I had just finished reading. Quite often readers can skip over these bits of a book but I urge you not to. I found myself rooting for Noor the further I delved into the book and yes she at times she was frustrating for her stubbornness and obstinance but her other strong qualities far out way these slight niggles I had about her. It’s wonderful to see another unsung hero being brought to light as I had never heard anything about Noor prior to reading this book. So many people’s daring work went unnoticed during the war and bringing the courage and audacity of Noor to the page made for a powerful, riveting and compelling read which I would certainly recommend to all fans of this genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment