Lewis employs careful language to hedge the title’s bold assertion ... Lewis is a verbose writer who can dedicate myriad pages to his own biography...At times, he makes himself sound like the Indiana Jones of archival research, imbuing the process with drama ... Lewis’s assertion — that for Baker, the unconditional love of animals was probably easier than relationships with humans — is both simplistic and probably accurate. Either way, he quickly moves on from this unusual foray into psychological analysis to return to his literary strengths, facts and action ... Sometimes it feels as if Lewis is content to accept the narrative that Baker consciously created for herself ... France is idealized...Lewis unquestioningly accepts the assertion, an overly simplistic and frankly inaccurate view of a country that struggles with race to this day ... A fascinating subject at a pivotal time in her life, Baker still doesn’t come alive on the page and remains unknowable. Maybe her ability to conceal and charm are why she was so good at espionage, but Lewis doesn’t take much time to explore the question of how she conceived of her own story ... What is compelling is the ragtag, oddly posh crew of supporting characters who surround her in her adventures ... Does it really matter if Josephine Baker was a particularly active member of the French Resistance, or an actual spy? Not to the French government. In the end, she earned the Medaille de la Résistance Avec Palme, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’Honneur, and was buried in the Pantheon. All the accouterments, in short, of a true French heroine.
Given the value, danger, and sheer flamboyance of Baker’s spying activities, it’s a shame that she hasn’t found a better chronicler of her exploits or her complicated history. For Agent Josephine, Damien Lewis, the British author of several works of military history and biography, dug into hard-to-access archives and the chronicles left by key players to create an account that is long on detail but sadly lacking in psychological insight or storytelling panache ... Despite Baker’s nominal centrality, Lewis is more comfortable with the male characters in her story, whom he’s able to fit into familiar story arcs ... for a writer such as Lewis, apparently steeped in Fleming’s work, there’s a constant hum of astonishment that Josephine Baker would, or could, work as a secret agent ... The specifics of her espionage career are remarkable, and certainly worth the telling—both in this form and in the screen adaptation this book has its eye on throughout. But what’s truly remarkable is that she was so consistently underestimated. Josephine Baker was a spy all along.
... much fresh detail ... 'This is not a book telling Josephine Baker’s life story,' Lewis cautions. His saga, though it stretches across five hundred pages, is mainly concerned with Baker’s service as a secret agent, and mainly confined to the years shadowed by the Second World War. There’s another sense, too, in which it isn’t her life story: the account is largely told by an assemblage of third parties. Lewis’s bibliography and notes make clear how deeply he has drawn on interviews with veterans, memoirs by agents, the private family archives of a British spymaster, and the wartime files of intelligence bureaus, some of which were not made available to the public until 2020.
Lewis provides a rollicking, energetic commentary on Baker’s adventures, noting her sangfroid in face of German interrogators and her boundless compassion for wounded soldiers and war victims. Lewis also reveals her quirky side, her bawdy humor, her spats with jealous fellow entertainers, and her ill-advised love affair with spy chief Jacques Abtey. Lewis’ biography is set to be adapted for a miniseries starring Janelle Monáe as the remarkably talented and courageous Agent Baker.
Mr. Lewis is a prolific author of wartime histories and novels. Agent Josephine is not a biography (there have been many) but a lengthy account of the war and her espionage work, interspersed with background material on her life ... a fascinating story, thoroughly researched and richly detailed. It’s written in the breathless style of a thriller, with a firm eye on a miniseries and an overdose of clichés ... Mr. Lewis writes evocatively about the supporting cast, all of whom could have come out of novels by Graham Greene or Ian Fleming.
... compelling ... fast-paced, cinematic prose ... Baker’s courage and commitment are indisputable, but in Lewis’ hands she comes off too saintly, making for a somewhat one-dimensional portrayal. (Previous biographers have sketched a more complex portrait of the star.) In addition, the author’s language can be overwrought ... These shortcomings are perhaps related to the fact that Baker’s own feelings about her wartime service remain inscrutable; she didn’t publicly reveal much about this period before her death in 1975. Even so, the facts alone make for an extraordinary tale.
Lewis writes with a flair for hard-boiled drama, sharing insights into the clandestine world of espionage and its nests of expert, aristocratic spymasters; hard-living, shrewd field agents; and debonair mafiosos with their hideous henchmen. The drama is balanced with lively details. Readers will delight in tales of Josephine with her entourage of animals, including a pet cheetah named Chiquita, and fall for a narrative that almost resembles a friends-to-lovers romance, were it not for the immense stakes and horrifying consequences of failure. Agent Josephine is a wonderful addition to the canon of World War II stories.
Lewis has constructed a lengthy biography of this remarkable woman. Agent Josephine is based on factual data concerning her espionage cohorts, and against the background of war, hatred, racial and religious bias. It stresses the contrast between the underprivileged child and the adult hero she would become --- largely because of her strong character and true grit.
Rather than crafting a conventional biography, Lewis concentrates on the wartime years, creating a heroic portrait of the selfless, brave, somewhat reckless, pioneering, unswervingly patriotic spy for the Allies who was active even before the Nazi occupation of Paris, where she lived and worked. In a suspenseful, serpentine narrative, the author piles on the detail about Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service in France, an agency that worked closely with the Deuxième Bureau, France’s counterespionage service ... Lewis shows readers how Baker’s difficult life experiences served her well as an agent ... A complex, entertaining story of intrigue and sangfroid involving a beloved, courageous hero.
... scintillating ... Lewis stuffs the narrative with intriguing digressions about wartime intelligence activities, including a U.S. plan to help the Mafia smuggle cigarettes into Morocco in exchange for intelligence, and vividly evokes the 'intense and tumultuous affair' between Baker and her chief handler, Jacques Abtey. The result is a thrilling espionage story.
