JOURNEY UNDERGROUND

This is the first time that an escape story -- whether fiction or fact -- through the French Underground has failed to catch my interest. So I don't think it is because I have gone stale on the material. It just must be that the author hasn't that flair for telling a story that makes it both personal enough to give it color and warmth and impersonal enough to be objectively a good story. The elements are all here, -- he was dropped by parachute into Occupied France, he was hidden by a farmer and sent on his way after his injured foot recovered sufficiently, he was rooted to Paris and out -- then back to Paris when danger threatened. And eventually he reached the Spanish border and safety. Details of manoeuvers, securing of clothes, food, medicine, of the life in hiding, of the attitude of the French who hid and helped him -- all given in intimate detail. But there's a sense of dead level of slogged out report -- never the feeling of vivid vignettes of the life, the people, never a sense of sexual emotional response. For straight facts about how it was done -- OK. Otherwise -- flat.