V FOR VENGEANCE

We left our friend Gregory Ballust more or less jobless for the moment at the end of The Black Baroness. And we left Europe collapsing into Nazi hands. Now -- in this new volume, Paris has fallen, and the story takes up the thread of the Russian's story, as he struggles back from death under the care of the French girl, Madeleine Lavealliere. Things happen fast. Madeleine's fiance is killed before her eyes, and she swears vengeance on his killers. Kuporovitch recovers and they join forces with Colonel aeroix, who is playing a tricky double game with the Vichy ranks as cover for leadership of France's subversive organization. Sallust is enlisted as liaison, and they go through even more hairbreadth escapes through a perilous year, which winds up with the attack on Russia, skilfully manipulated as a move towards saving democracy by upsetting the Nazi timetable. Wheatley spins a good yarn. I wish he didn't feel it incumbent upon him to mount the propaganda barrel in the process.