Given to me by a work colleague who was having a clear out prior to a house move.

This is the third Ryan book I've read and in many respects it is the most complex and that is purely down to the main character Harry Cole,a London chancer,whom at one time ran one of the most successful lines of escape for shot down Allied airmen out of occupied France during WWII. The main character is based on a real person but many of his files are still sealed with secrecy by the British Government which allows a certain leeway with the facts.Therein lies some of the problems with this book for me because despite on one hand wanting to like him and wanting to care what happened to him and those around him I never really could. If only half of what is written is true he seems such an extraordinary character who evades several attempts to kill him and in truth sounds like an imaginary character rather than a real one.

The book is well written,runs at a good pace whilst giving a decent impression to life within occupied France (although I recently finished The Forger by Paul Watkins and felt that he did a better job there)and the ending was ambiguous enough to make your own conclusion but on the downside I did find the novel overly long.

Whatever the truth of the Harry Cole story this book did give me cause for thought.At one point two of the more peripheral characters were discussing the merits of helping Allied flyers to escape or more accurately whether their survival and ability to return to fight again were worth more than the lives of the numerous civilians,some totally innocent, who were either killed or interned by the Germans in retribution for these very escapes? Not something that I'd given much thought to before.

Moving on to Deltic as part of a swap. Enjoy!

Waiting for me when I got home today. I enjoyed the previous Robert Ryan books you shared with me, and am looking forward to this one. Thank you.

I finished this book this morning with my Weetabix. This was one of those books that I found very hard to put down. Although it was hard to distinguish the fact from the fiction, if you read factual accounts of the same period you would find it's just the same. This has left me in the mood for another Robert Ryan and I have one up my sleeve......

Since this has been kicking around for a while now, in order to free up some space on the Brigantes OBCZ Bookshelf, I thought I'd move it on to the Ye Olde Starre Inne OBCZ Bookshelf - where hopefully it'll find a new reader...

releasing, as promised...