The Paris Agent by Kelly Rimmer

Title: The Paris Agent

Author: Kelly Rimmer

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Published: 28th June 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages:  340

Price: $32.99

Synopsis: Two otherwise ordinary women become female spies in WWII France in this sweeping new novel of historical suspense by New York Times bestselling author Kelly Rimmer.

Two otherwise ordinary women become spies in WWII France in this sweeping new novel of historical suspense by New York Times bestselling author Kelly Rimmer
Twenty-five years after the end of the war, ageing British SOE operative Noah Ainsworth is reflecting on the secret agent who saved his life when a mission went wrong during his perilous, exhilarating years in occupied France. He never knew her real name, nor whether she survived the war.

His daughter Charlotte begins a search for answers. What follows is the story of Fleur and Chloe, two otherwise ordinary women who in 1943 are called up by the SOE for deployment in France. Taking enormous risks with very little information or resources, the women have no idea they’re at the mercy of a double agent within their ranks who’s causing chaos.

As Charlotte’s search for answers continues, new suspicions are raised about the identity of the double agent, with unsettling clues pointing to her father.

From the bestselling Australian author of The Warsaw Orphan, this emotionally compelling novel is inspired by real-life female WWII agents including Violette Szabo and Diana Rowden, whose incredible stories have never before been brought to readers.

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In 1970, Noah Ainsworth, a former SOE agent starts telling his daughter, Charlotte, about the agent who saved his life. Charlotte finds Theo, a young academic helping a professor in Liverpool create an oral history of the SOE and has been contacting former SOE agents for many years. Noah agrees so he can find Remy and the agent who saved his life, and what happened to Fleur and Chloe, who were recruited to the SOE in 1943 and went on missions across Europe. Each SOE agent would take enormous risks, with limited information – and a double agent. This double agent forces one of the women to go to extreme lengths to protect loved ones with no sense of what their fate will be. Charlotte and Theo’s probing will expose secrets that have been buried for twenty-five years. Kelly’s latest book has been inspired by SOE stories and real-life female agents such as Violette Szabo and Diana Rowden.

Kelly Rimmer’s new book explores the SOE and the implications of the secrets they had to keep and live with, and what happened during the war years as the SOE agents navigated being spies and the lives they were living, and what it meant to lie. Lying became second nature to these women, to Fleur and Chloe, who never really knew who the other really was. To do so would have been dangerous and resulted in outcomes that would have endangered their families and fellow agents and could have changed the direction of the war. Fleur and Chloe were code names – Fleur was Eloise and Chloe was Josie. At times, the characters ponder what a world where the Nazis win would be like, as at the time, they didn’t know who was going to win, and it seemed like the Nazis were gaining ground and would defeat the Allies. Much like other World War Two novels and novels about the SOE, The Paris Agent is set in France, and focuses on the work that the SOE did in France to help the resistance movement during World War Two. It is told through three different perspectives – Fleur and Chloe in 1943-1944, and Charlotte in 1970, which allows the mystery and what has happened to slowly unfold. As the story flicked back and forth between 1943, 1944 and 1970, and the different places Fleur, Chloe and Charlotte were in, the connections between the two SOE women and Charlotte’s father were revealed to the reader.

Using the three perspectives allowed for the secrecy of the SOE and its involvement in the French Resistance, and the implications of what would happen if the spies were caught and the measures they’d have to take if that happened ensured that the characters were able to tell their story in an emotive way even though they had to act detached and not reveal anything to anyone, resulting in the fracturing of families, the families splitting up, and potentially never seeing each other again, or if they survived the war, hiding secrets from their future families, as Noah has to keep things from Charlotte – until she goes digging after he mentions wanting to find the people who saved him in the war. I liked the way the story was told – where Eloise (Fleur) and Josie (Chloe) were at separated at times, so their chapters often took place in different times and months until they came together. It gave the story something extra and showed the different areas of Europe and tasks that the SOE were undertaking. I felt drawn into this novel at times, wanting to know what was going to happen and the fates of Eloise and Josie – things were constantly uncertain, and I kept hoping that Eloise would get back to her son, Hughie, and that they would all find out who the double agent was before it was too late. And that they would see things through to the end of the war. The bravery of these women and their uncertain fates showed that there are so many stories we do not know about the war, specifically individual stories. Because there will always be untold stories about the same thing, much of the background and basic information will be similar or the same to other books, but the difference will always be found in the characters and their stories, and their worldviews. It is in how the characters shape the story and create a sense of time and place through what they have experienced and the reactions of those around them. Kelly has created another story based on some facts but with her own characters and plot, where the hunt for some identities might lead to another. I liked Theo and Charlotte as well, and the way that they worked together and did their best to help Noah whilst protecting secrets and records that in 1970, weren’t released, so the project the professor was working on relied on oral histories, as my research shows that the SOE records only started to be released from 1993 onwards. Setting Charlotte and Noah’s story in 1970 meant that Kelly was able to work with what would have been known then whilst still maintaining a sense of secrecy and hidden information – I did wonder if in real life if Noah, Charlotte, and Theo would have been able to find out what happened to their friends – it did work for the novel though, because Kelly used the parameters of what they could have done and how they went about finding people and information to execute this aspect. It is a gripping book with three intertwining stories that explores a part of history that not everyone knows about, but I am sure more people are finding out about through books like this.