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More than 60 years after the conclusion of World War II and nearly a century after the beginning of the Great War, stories of these conflicts still have the power to enthral. Writers have discovered that tales of the duplicitous dealings of spies on every side of conflicts exert a strange fascination on readers. Award-winning author William Boyd writes an edgy thriller about a mother with a mysterious past who involves her initially disbelieving daughter in a quest both to preserve her life as well as to avenge a series of wrongs perpetrated during World War II, prior to the entry of the United States into the fray. In 1976, single mother Ruth Gilmartin is given a folder by her mother Sally Gilmartin containing the opening chapter of THE STORY OF EVA DELECTORSKAYA. Ruth has the disdainful, slightly contemptuous regard for her mother so frequently displayed by children toward their aging parents and at first suspects Sally of incipient dementia. Sally is certainly displaying what could well be interpreted as paranoia but persuades her daughter to read what she says is an account of her own life, the life of Eva. Eva's story begins in Paris, in 1939, at the funeral of her brother, Kolia. Kolia has been murdered and soon after Eva meets Lucas Romer, a man who claims Kolia had been working for him. Lucas asks Eva to take up where her brother left off and to work for him and the British government. Despite her misgivings but with her father's encouragement, Eva accedes to Romer's request and is soon being trained in the arts of spying, in a lonely outpost in Scotland. She proves an apt pupil. She feels the need for a closer contact with Romer than that of master and acolyte and soon occupies the position of his lover. A spy's life is a difficult one. Eva understands she must always have a bolt hole, a safe house to which she may retreat and soon it becomes second nature to prepare such a safe haven for herself, no matter where she is: a stratagem that is to save her life on more than one occasion. The newly-minted spy becomes a pseudo journalist in Belgium, spreading false stories that cause consternation in the bosoms of the Axis powers. Her life changes even more when she is sent to the US which is still remaining aloof from the war. She becomes part of a news organisation run by the British government which attempts to seduce the US, by fair means or foul, into joining the conflict. Ruth, whose story is told in the first person, gradually becomes convinced of the veracity of her mother's narrative. Soon she is drawn into the shady world of intrigue when her mother requests Ruth's help in speaking to Lucas, now a respectable, although aging, life peer. The spy's daughter is having problems of her own. The father of her son is a German academic. His brother arrives unexpectedly in Oxford and settles happily into living in Ruth's home. Unfortunately, a friend soon comes to join him and it is quite possible that she is a member of the Baader Meinhof gang. Ruth must therefore balance looking after her son against the perils that could be presented by her unwelcome boarders. Then there is a possible love interest in the person of Hamid, a student of hers of Iranian origin, one whose brother had been murdered by the Shah's secret police. The glimpse into the historically valid machinations of the Allies in attempting to involve the US in the war is fascinating. The notions of necessary distrust are unsettling, as is the thought that once one has been a spy, the rest of one's life must be spent alert and watchful of reprisals. Eva's characterisation is powerful: that of Ruth is rather less so. There is a remarkable lack of gore, despite the subject matter of the book, so that the one killing scrutinised in any sort of detail proves more ghastly than a cluster of killings might in another novel. I thought that there would be some definite resolution to one of the main plot threads, but I felt a trifle cheated that it was dismissed so facilely. I've no doubt, though, that this is a book that will stay in my mind for quite some time to come.
Reviewed by Denise Pickles, October 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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