The Paris agent: History in fiction

The Paris Agent is the second historical fiction I have read by Australian author, Kelly Rimmer. See my post on The German wife for more by the author. I preferred the German story to the Paris one. Read on for more of my thoughts.

The Paris agent | Published July 2023 | Read September 2023

The Paris agent covers a part of history that fascinates me, that being the years following the Second World War and how survivors dealt with their experiences. The book is set in 1970s Liverpool where Noah Ainsworth, who has gaps in his memory due to a head injury sustained in the war, is encouraged by his daughter, Charlotte, to explore his past as a British operative in France. Noah is grieving after the accidental death of his wife and is keen to find the man he believes saved his life at the end of the war to thank him. Charlotte partners with a young historian, Theo, to uncover information about the activities of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the French and British agents in her father's inner circle. Her search for the truth allows Kelly Rimmer to present a story of the heroic deeds of a group of SOE agents and uncover a traitor in their midst. Theo also finds out the truth about his history.

I am interested in exploring the idea of how people deal with their wartime activities and actions in the aftermath of the conflict. I am intrigued by what it must have been like to try to get on with life after the horrors of WW2, no matter what your experience of the war. I like that Rimmer's novels are based on real people. Her books are well researched. I know from my own research that the activities and fates of the two French SOE agents in her book mirror what real agents, Violet Szabo and Diana Rowden, experienced. I enjoyed the chapters on their wartime activities and the explanation of how the SOE worked. There is a lot of detail, though, so it takes a long time to get to the point of the book, which is to help Noah reconcile with his past.

The chapters that follow the trail that Charlotte and Theo travel down to find answers in the 1970s are intriguing and well constructed. I felt connected to Noah, Charlotte and Theo as they are nicely fleshed out characters and this helped me get on board with their quest for the truth. There is added interest to Noah's story in relation to his wife. Their marriage seemed idyllic on the surface, but Noah's wife was continually jealous of his war work and attempted to prevent him from revisiting his past. Charlotte gains a new perspective on her mother as these things come to light.

As with other reviews I've read, I found the WW2 parts a bit confusing. I often struggled to figure out whose story I was reading. The two Paris agents have real names and code names and it is hard to keep track of them as they are used interchangeably. Other reviews I've read also commented on how similar the two women sound, and I agree, so it is even harder to distinguish their voices from each other. Each time I started a new chapter on one of the female agents, I had to figure out which one I was reading about and that was distracting.

There was also one minor thing with the writing that irked me. Rimmer is Australian and her main 1970s characters British yet I sometimes felt she was writing for a strictly American audience. I can handle seeing American spelling, even though it's jarring, but I she uses a few terms in the 1970s story that are decidedly un-British. These terms detract from the book's authenticity. Two examples I can recall are 'parking lot' (car park) and 'diaper' (nappy).

I don't normally read historical fiction but I have enjoyed my two recent outings by Kelly Rimmer, The German wife and The Paris agent. That said, I think I'd prefer to read biographical accounts. Both Rimmer novels I've read are trying to do too much. The German wife has a whole chunk devoted NOT to the German wife that seems unnecessary. I could have read a whole novel on the wartime experiences of the German wife. Her family's struggles to fit into life in the US after her husband was whisked out of Europe by the Americans to capitalise on his scientific knowledge is even enough for a book. The Paris agent similarly could have been two novels, one on the wartime activities of the SOE featuring the agents in the book and one on Noah's story. That would give more depth to the two women's stories rather than shoehorning them into Noah's quest for answers. I wanted to know more about Noah and Theo and see greater exploration of Noah reconciling with his past. All that could have been a novel on its own, with some reference to the SOE work that impacted on his story.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐