A superb novel combining spy thriller and troubled romance. Franka is so beaten down by the Nazi regime that she sees no point in living and heads out to end it all in a snowstorm, until she happens across a critically injured parachutist.He may be a pilot for the Luftwaffe, part of the grisly German machine of repression and war that has taken many of her loved ones away from her. Something doesn’t seem quite right, but if he is not who his papers say then he must be an Allied pilot – one of those who have taken the rest of her friends and family in air raids against German cities and civilians. Either way, whether she is right or wrong, she will bring herself to the attention of the same Gestapo which has recently released her from prison, but not from suspicion. Her efforts to solve the conundrum without getting arrested or making a fool of herself, and the inevitable entrapment of others into the web of deceptions, provide a nicely-paced story that is avoids the breathlessness of its genres to generate an aura of authenticity. The plot points are rather obvious, but the situation makes them so; the interest factor is not determining what the challenges are going to be but how those very obvious difficulties can possibly be overcome.
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