Escape from Paris

April 22, 2013
Originally published in an abridged version 30 years ago, this reissue in the Carolyn Hart classics series trades the author’s usual South Carolina Lowcountry setting for 1940 Nazi-occupied France. At a hospital for wounded Allied prisoners outside Paris, American Linda Rossiter impulsively allows an English pilot to stow away in the trunk of her car to avoid being sent to a German P.O.W. camp. Later, Linda and her older sister, Eleanor Masson, whose French husband has been missing since the Battle of Dunkirk, become a crucial part of a network that helps British flyers escape to Spain. Hart (Dead, White, and Blue), the winner of multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards, does a good job describing the hardship and tension involved in not knowing who can be trusted, wondering whether an accomplice might be caught, and worrying about whether there will be sufficient food and money to continue the mission.