Nancy Wake: SOE's Greatest Heroine by Russell Braddon

 
I finished another female spy book the other night but hadn't had a chance to list it here till now. Nancy Wake was a 20-something woman during World War II. She was originally from New Zealand who had immigrated to England. When World War II broke out, she was living in Marseille, France, married to a Frenchman. 


She started her spy efforts by aiding the French Resistance by giving them money and food since her husband was wealthy. She gradually took on more duties like being a courier delivering messages by train to other French cities. For her own safety in 1943, she went to England but signed up with the SOE and returned to France to work undercover.

Buy the end of the war she was a full-fledged spy, arranging parachute drops of supplies, weapons, and people, as well as whatever else needed to be done to defeat the Bosch/the gerries/the Germans.

This book was written relatively soon after the war, in 1956. I found the writing to be almost comical in places, but it was partially just the style of the time, I think. Fascinating woman though she could be irritating as hell at times, almost playing dumb, but she was obviously intelligent and probably used her feminine wiles to her advantage to get what she wanted.


I read online that the first two seasons of Wish Me Luck were based on some of her experiences. I wrote a Squidoo article on Women Spies in World War II, if you want to read about more of these brave women.
 

Book Read: Nancy Wake:  SOE's Greatest Heroine

Author:  Russell Braddon

ISBN:  978-07524-5485-6

The Wolves at the Door: The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy by Judith L. Pearson

I got on a female spy kick when I innocently checked out the BBC series Wish Me Luck about a month ago. I almost took the three sets of DVDs back to the library but stuck one in one day and was instantly hooked.

Wish Me Luck was a fictional account of British women spies who helped the French Resistance during World War II. Much of the information was accurate (the training they went through and the undercover nature of this dangerous job including changing their names, learning the French habits and changing everything about themselves including French dental work, feminine products, cigarettes, and clothes to name just a few). It was fascinating.

Then I watched Charlotte Gray again and another spy movie. Then I read The Wolves at the Door. Virginia Hall was an American who was declined by the U.S. to do secret work in Europe during the war because of her handicap. She'd lost part of her leg below the knee in a shooting accident. She worn a wooden prosthetic she named Cuthbert.

She was a brave, fascinating women who spent four years working undercover in France for Great Britain's SOE and finally for America's OSS. If you love a good read, that's also a true story, you'll love this one!

I did find several typos near the end of this book. Ridiculous! I guess the proofreader was tired. 

Do you have any female spy novels or nonfiction books to recommend?

Book Read: The Wolves at the Door:  The True Story of America's Greatest Female Spy

Author:  Judith L. Pearson

ISBN:  1-59228-762-X