THE SPY’S WIFE
Fiona McIntosh
Penguin Random House
REVIEWED BY PETER STUPPLES
Fiona McIntosh is a much published writer of romantic adventures, fantasy tales and historical fiction. She has an effortless style that carries the reader into the 1930s in Britain and Germany, as tensions mount in preparation for a war that seems inevitable.
The first chapters and the epilogue owe perhaps too much to the tradition of romance novels, end papers, sandwiching between them a much grittier tale of espionage which, at times, threatens to spill over into brutal tragedy.
In 1933, Max and his Jewish wife Rachel witness the Burning of the Reichstag in Berlin, the decisive move by Hitler’s fascists to suppress all political opposition and, simultaneously, to usher in laws that persecute Jews and other non-aryans in Germany.
Three years later we are wafted to the idylls of the North Yorkshire moors, where a young widow, Evie Armstrong, daughter of the station master at Levisham, first meets the charming, reticent Max, working now as an engineer in England after the death of his wife.
At first Evie is unaware that Max is a German spy, falling hopelessly in love with him and he with her. When Max is unmasked and arrested, likely to be executed, the ever-resourceful Evie persuades MI5 to let her work with Max back in Germany, where she will spy on German preparations for the war.
She will have the perfect cover, married to a German engineer with access to influential figures in the Nazi regime. Moreover, she is a fluent German speaker, having been brought up by a German nanny, just as Max speaks perfect English.
The couple go to live in Munich and carry out their mission, but all does not go quite as smoothly as planned.
The reader is expected to swallow a lot of absurdities before the novel hits its stride, becoming exciting, nail-biting. Evie herself is well drawn. Her daring and bravery almost convincing. Max turns out to be a self-effacing hero. The couple face down demons with unflinching determination.
In many ways this book is a relief. A thriller and romance, taking the reader back to an era of fiction that is no more, as we face the horrors of the 21st century in remorseless social realism, exhausting autofiction and dystopian horrors.
