MixedThe Times (UK)Liberation is...a touch more Hollywood. In one scene Wake enters a café to meet a contact, despite being warned that the Nazi-collaborating Milice have sealed the town; she coolly introduces herself as the woman pictured in the Wanted poster above the counter before shooting two Milice men dead and killing another with his knife. Another exploit features her disguising herself as a prostitute to infiltrate Gestapo headquarters and then poisoning the officers’ wine. Wake did kill Nazis, but neither of these incidents took place, and these depictions in Liberation of her defiance and courage occasionally feel overly insistent — several scenes ending with her being cheered ... [an] exciting and well-written [account] of wartime valour ... [the] protagonist’s qualities shine through.
Ariel Lawhon
PositiveThe Times (UK)Code Name Hélène is the richer of the two [compared with Liberation, also about Nancy Wake], and the more thoroughly researched; the chapters devoted to Fiocca’s courtship of \'Noncee\' and their luxurious lifestyle in peacetime Marseilles give the opening third of the book a slower pace, but subsequent events gain power from the juxtaposition ... Lawhon’s novel has more than its share of action, but since it is largely told in the first person we see the danger from Wake’s perspective and are rarely instructed what to make of her. These are exciting and well-written accounts of wartime valour, and their protagonist’s qualities shine through.
Andrew Altschul
RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)Novels about writers can be a recipe for self-indulgence, but this is beautifully executed. The shifting dynamics in the cell’s safe house in an upper-class Lima neighbourhood are gripping, and there’s also dry humour in Altschul’s alter-ego Andres’s anxiety over whether he can place Leo’s story in the necessary geopolitical context ... but this is a multi-layered, immersive novel in which the atmosphere and history of Peru leap off the page.
