Description

‘The wartime spy career of Mathilde Carre – aka “the Cat” and “Agent Victoire” – is so extraordinary it almost defies belief’ The Times

An exhilarating true story of espionage, resistance, and one of WW2’s most charismatic double-agents.

Occupied Paris, 1940. A woman in a red hat and a black fur coat hurries down a side-street. She is Mathilde Carre, codenamed ‘the Cat’, later known as Agent Victoire – charismatic, daring and a spy.

These are the darkest days for France, yet Mathilde is driven by a sense of destiny that she will be her nation’s saviour. Soon, she is at the centre of the first great Allied intelligence network of the Second World War.

But as Roland Philipps shows in this extraordinary account of her life, when the Germans close in, Mathilde makes a desperate and dangerous compromise. Nobody – not her German handler, nor the Resistance and the British – can be certain where her allegiances now lie…

‘A truly astonishing story, meticulously and brilliantly told’ Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline

‘Gripping… Enough plot twists and moral ambiguity to satisfy any spy novelist’ Spectator

Publisher Review

The wartime spy career of Mathilde Carre - aka 'the Cat' and 'Agent Victoire' - is so extraordinary it almost defies belief * The Times * Enough plot twists and moral ambiguity to satisfy any spy novelist ... At its heart this is a book about the moral dilemmas involved in living under the perverting conditions of war and occupation ... Philipps does a fine job of setting the scene inside France, and building up the tension in this increasingly gripping wartime story, and all that follows ... a deeply humane book -- Clare Mulley * Spectator * What a read! What a fascinating character! I was gripped from the first page to the last. A truly astonishing story, meticulously and brilliantly told -- Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline A wonderful, atmospheric book: a miraculous portrait of a flawed human being, and a masterful account of the moral quagmire of wartime France and Britain -- Carmen Callil, author of Bad Faith Roland Philipps tells Victoire's story with skill and compassion, and reveals that for all her betrayals, she deserves more understanding than she received in her lifetime -- Artemis Cooper, author of Patrick Leigh Fermor