The Mysterious Bookshop
Janes, J. Robert, The Little Parachute
In 1943 occupied France, French villagers, officials, and operatives are caught in a cat-and-mouse game. Their survival may depend on the cunning and courage of a mute ten-year-old boy.
Occupied France is a place of danger and duplicity; of survival and betrayal; of the double and triple cross. Martin, a ten-year-old English boy, rendered speechless after the trauma of the 1940 Blitzkrieg, travels from the countryside to see a specialist in Paris, accompanied by his purported mother, Angélique Bellecour, in reality his missing father’s mistress.
Two SS officers, the unspeakably cruel Kraus and his conflicted superior Dirksen, suspect them of being couriers for the underground and detain them for questioning, where they are privy to the fatal techniques used on other detainees. The SS suspicions are further aroused when Martin’s enigmatic parachute drawing is discovered. The question arises whether it signals the arrival of an agent sent to rally the resistance and thwart German plans to bomb London from a site within France.
And so begins the game. Who is watching the watchers? Who is complicit? Who, if anyone, can be trusted?
Occupied France is a place of danger and duplicity; of survival and betrayal; of the double and triple cross. Martin, a ten-year-old English boy, rendered speechless after the trauma of the 1940 Blitzkrieg, travels from the countryside to see a specialist in Paris, accompanied by his purported mother, Angélique Bellecour, in reality his missing father’s mistress.
Two SS officers, the unspeakably cruel Kraus and his conflicted superior Dirksen, suspect them of being couriers for the underground and detain them for questioning, where they are privy to the fatal techniques used on other detainees. The SS suspicions are further aroused when Martin’s enigmatic parachute drawing is discovered. The question arises whether it signals the arrival of an agent sent to rally the resistance and thwart German plans to bomb London from a site within France.
And so begins the game. Who is watching the watchers? Who is complicit? Who, if anyone, can be trusted?
